New Year in Uttlesford is getting off to an unpromising start for ostriches! Tomorrow’s Dunmow & Stansted Observer is likely a run story that was Tweated yesterday and can already be read on the web about Uttlesford DC’s refusal to face facts over the number of new homes it should be planning.

I last blogged in November about the tendency of Uttlesford Conservatives to cut themselves off from the real world when planning the future. Unsurprisingly, they have continued down a blind alley which will probably lead to the opposite of what they want. We are at risk have getting more and not fewer homes because the Tories won’t play by the rules.

A letter from Barton Willmore was tabled BUT IGNORED at the cabinet meeting on December 13th.

Towards the end of November David Lock Associates wrote a similar letter for the Fairfield Partnership to the council’s LDF working group members. On 22nd November the members decided to reject the complaint about the 15-year plan period, apparently on the basis that UDC will somehow exempt itself from the national planning framework.

I have no brief for these developers. I don’t support Fairfield’s plan for a new settlement at Elsenham/Henham. I have fought hard in the past against development of a new settlement at Easton Park. But I think it is reckless of UDC to bury its head in the sand over the need to plan ahead for 15 years. The council risks the work so far being dismissed as unsound by a planning inspector, bringing further years’ delay and all-out planning anarchy in Uttlesford.

It’s just 1,000 years ago this year that a young man named Canute (or Knut) arrived in England from Denmark. He eventually became King of England. Despite his unpleasant Viking tendencies, he insisted to his courtiers that he could not command the tides. He sat his throne on the beach and got wet feet. He was determined to show you can’t buck the rules of nature. No one at Uttlesford is pretending to be king, but they don’t seem to share the wisdom of Canute for the rules of planning. It’s much easier to be an ostrich, until your denial backfires and we all have to suffer the consequences. 🙁