There is nothing like a few pending crises to bring people of normally differing views together.

Yesterday started with both the Dunmow Broadcast and the Saffron Walden Reporter featuring two Conservatives, Sir Alan Haselhurst MP and Cllr Howard Rolfe, lining up with me, a Liberal Democrat councillor, to promote the benefits of our country remaining within the European Union. Brexit is my first potential crisis, which would be what EU leavers call fear-making but I call reality-checking.

The second impending crisis is Uttlesford Council running out of money in say 2019 when (if?) central government strips away much of its financial support to local government. I’m less concerned by that than the UK voting for national isolation on June 23rd as there is much more time to adjust our finances. Anyway, the upshot of last night’s debate at the full council meeting was unanimity between the Lib Dems and the Tories over next year’s budget and council tax rise of 1%. Unanimity across the whole council wasn’t quite achieved. Some Residents for Uttlesford members voted with us whilst others voted against or abstained.

The Lib Dems were pleased that the Conservatives amended the budget by accepting our suggestion of making good cuts by Essex County Council to the local highways improvement budget. The cuts will now be made good by Uttlesford helping to plus the gap. It means that more village road improvements can continue and the popular Highways Ranger scheme will be maintained.

The third crisis to be avoided is another failed Local Plan. No one wants a repeat of the eight year disaster that ended in a failed plan in 2014, though last month’s nine-month extension of the timetable for the latest plan rang muted alarm bells. There was overwhelming acceptance last night that a special council meeting should take place on March 21st to consider whether or not to continue to investigate the option of a new settlement or settlements. I think this meeting is unnecessary as we are already doing just that as one of several options for future growth in the district.

So I abstained on the vote – which was taken without any discussion whatsoever. I think the council could usefully spend its time on March 21st having an update on progress so far (since January last year) with the new Local Plan, endorsing that and agreeing to the whole work programme until the completion of the Local Plan in 2017; but not simply focus on the single settlement option. I did say at the start there was “near unity” at last night’s meeting.

Earlier in the meeting I asked the leader of the council, Howard Rolfe, about the incredibly delayed announcement by the Secretary of State of decisions on the Fairfield planning appeal at Elsenham and the Land Securities appeal at Little Easton, both for around 800 homes. These have been lost in the system for over twelve months and had been promised by last July. I am concerned that someone in central government may be trying to get the council to make a declaration of intent on a new settlement before they uphold one or both appeals and signal “here’s your new settlement(s), with a starter for 800”!

I was assured this is not the case. Here is what we said:

Alan Dean:

Madam Chairman, the Leader of the Council has already made reference to a workshop on the Local Plan that we had earlier this evening. At that workshop the frustration of many members of the Council about the delay in decisions or announcements from the Secretary of State over 2 planning appeals, at Elsenham and Little Easton, was mentioned and the Leader did say that he would, not for the first time, be raising our concerns with Sir Alan Haselhurst our local MP. I’d like to ask the Leader of the Council whether he can confirm that in any discussions with people at Westminster, or from Whitehall, or with our own officers, or anybody else for that matter who is involved with this process, that there has been no indication that the Secretary of State is waiting for Uttlesford District Council to signal in some way the likelihood of moving towards as single settlement before his decision is made public?

Howard Rolfe:

Yes I can confirm that. The response we’ve had back from the minister, Brandon Lewis, is that this is a judicial situation, so he’s not able to make any comment until a decision has been made. We understand that there is a bit of a backlog. The last briefing we had was that a recommendation had been given to ministers, which is why we had hoped for something before now. But certainly there has never been any indication of a link in terms of them waiting for us to make our move. Certainly tomorrow, when we see Sir Alan (Haselhurst), we will be stressing the importance, because there may not be a relevance from us to them, but there certainly is a relevance from them to us. And that really should be taken into account.