EARLY ONE MORNING.........................
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Stansted North on Uttlesford District Council and former Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Learn more
by Alan Dean on 19 September, 2013
The letter Failed policies below from former councillor Geoff Powers appeared in today’s Dunmow Broadcast newspaper. It captures much about the present local planning debacle. I have read on Twitter that Sir Alan Haselhurst referred Cllr Howard Rolfe’s cry for help to nearby MP Mark Prisk, who is also minister of state for housing. Mr Prisk has suggested that Uttlesford council ask for help and advice from the government’s planning advisory service.
This is puzzling! I would be amazed if Uttlesford planners were not already in regular contact with the government’s planning advisory service. No wonder Geoff Powers described this public dialogue amongst local Conservatives “grandstanding”.
It’s time for attention-seeking by the councillors in charge of planning to be worthy of an audience. Taking up column inches with meaningless showing-off does neither the council nor local politics any credit.
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Failed policies
THE irony of Howard Rolfe’s request to Uttlesford’s MP, Sir Alan Haselhurst, to help bail out the district council in its current planning predicament will not be lost on residents.
Those who have followed events over the past six years will recognise this councillor as one of the prime ‘movers and shakers’ who has brought about the present chaotic situation in our district.
The fact is there would be no ‘development frenzy’ in Uttlesford if Cllr Rolfe and his cabinet colleagues had set about the task of drawing up a district plan in a conscientious, systematic and timely fashion, involving residents in the process from the outset, as the law requires.
The cabinet’s decisions, arrived at largely without formal debate and approval by UDC’s full council, lack rationale and democratic validity.
Further, getting hold of documentary information about the process is proving well-nigh impossible for members of the public.
This is localism, Uttlesford-style!
It is all too evident that, in embarking on the new Local Plan, the council leadership failed from the out- set to grasp the scale and complexity of the task which lay before them.
They wasted precious time in ‘politicking’ and ‘gerrymandering’ in an attempt to adjust the development process to suit their own ends, hoping to ensure that little or no housing development would take place in the north of the district.
Uttlesford residents quickly rumbled this clique of councillors with their absurd schemes for housing expansion.
Collectively, they have proved grossly inept in carrying out their statutory duties as our elected representatives: they are unfit to hold public office.
Meanwhile, we still have no sign of a valid Local Plan to provide a framework for current and future decision-making.
The council leadership has been overtaken by events beyond its control, and is in a state of near panic. Now, unsurprisingly, we have a development free-for-all.
The Coalition Government’s housing legislation, whatever one’s views about it in political terms, places obligations on all planning authorities to follow the guidelines laid down by central government and to play by the rules.
Cllr Rolfe’s attempt to draw Sir Alan Haselhurst into this bureaucratic morass, therefore, is pure grandstanding, and will be seen by the public for what it is – a classic example of ‘gesture politics’ aiming to take the ‘heat’ off himself and his cabinet colleagues.
It is an exercise in futility on Cllr Rolfe’s part, because there is no way the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, is going to exempt Uttlesford District Council from a requirement to conform to the prevailing legislation.
So, for the foreseeable future, the district of Uttlesford will continue to be swamped by applications from developers – a case of chickens coming home to roost.
I’m still trying to work out what these “special circumstances” are that Cllr Rolfe seems to think apply to Uttlesford. Unless he is referring to the particular depth of incompetence of the Council’s leadership, himself included.
I telephoned Howard Rolfe later in the evening after that fateful council meeting in September 2007 when the Conservatives plucked a new settlement at Elsenham like a rabbit from a hat. I said that aberration would come back to bite them and the rest of us. My forecast was poo-pooed. Six years later……!
The Tories took control of UDC four months earlier. They were arrogant. They thought they were on course to take sole control of the UK in 2010. They could defy gravity. David Cameron would sweep away John Prescott’s “centralised housing targets”. They were so naive and arrogant. They are desperate to blame anyone else but themselves. They should indeed resign and hopefully be replaced by people who are both self-aware and worldly wise.
Matt,
The special circumstances are that CLLR ROLFE lives there, and the area he’s talking about are the golden acres in NORTH North Essex, especially those around Great Chesterford: less worthy areas of North Essex – i.e. SOUTH North Essex, like Great Dunmow and Stansted don’t qualify – but then, everyone has known that was the case ever since he was elected.
District councillors who are unwilling to serve and to speak for the whole of the district’s electorate – and there are a number in Uttlesford – should resign and go back to being plain parish councillors, because ‘parish pump’ summarises the breadth of their thinking and their grasp and understanding of essential facts!
Uttlesford as a council has always had a problem looking beyond the length of its own nose; look at their recent rejection of any gestures of co-operation from other local authorities and voluntary bodies. It’s as if the garden fence around Uttlesford was 30 feet high, and they’re just not interested about what goes on on the other side. Never mind that they might learn something by peeping through the fence; they’d much rather work at reinventing the wheel – because Uttlesford knows best!! Self-regard is the order of the day – that’s why we’re in such an appalling mess.