As I wrote in my previous post, that’s a recent newspaper article headline about the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings. I compared Johnsonian populism with Residents for Uttlesford’s local populism here in North-West Essex.

For R4U, having a Council Corporate Deliver Plan of what they intend to achieve in the next three years should be their top level statement of intent. There is also the Local Plan for local development planning of homes, jobs, infrastructure and communities – our towns and villages.

Now that’s slower in being born than anything I know. An elephant takes 23 months. Uttlesford’s Local Plan appears to be closer to 23 years. It’s already in year 15, if you stretch your imagination and ignore two still-births.

Residents for Uttlesford came to power 13 months ago in May 2019 with a commitment to scrap the Local Plan devised by the Tories – and the Lib Dem, and R4U themselves. The plan had R4U support until the final decision was about to be made in early 2019. They then did a populist U-turn, refused to support the plan at the eleventh hour, and subsequently promised the voters that they would ask the public what they wanted for the district’s future, if residents elected them.

If the truth be known, R4U expected to have to form a coalition with other parties, such as the Lib Dems, who don’t make rash, populist promises. But the voters really liked all those populist commitments from R4U. “Vote for me and there will be no extra houses built near where you live”, was the message on many a doorstep. The result: the R4U party won a large majority. AND NOW THEY HAVE TO DELIVER ON THEIR PROMISES. “Oh dear! What do we do now”, they thought?

For a start, they need to be straight with local people by telling the real residents that, under Westminster’s regulations, R4U councillors have to plan for twice as many new homes in our towns and villages than was the case with the Local Plan they quietly scrapped under lock-down on April 30^th. They want local people to come up with a solution of where to locate 12-13,000 new homes, instead of under 6,000 that still had to be located when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats backed the old plan.

On the 30th of April, R4U threw out a proposal from the Lib Dems that they should at least inform the public about their intended controversial and challenging decision before setting sail towards their “perfect and popular new Local Plan”.

Sadly, at the beginning of June we find that the ship remains marooned in port. It has not set sailed. R4U have not even revealed a navigation chart. They seem to be searching through their telescope to find someone to tell them what to do next. They are even squabbling amongst themselves about the continued delay.

A year’s messing around, on top of fourteen years, may seem small, until one realizes that central government has threatened to take Uttlesford’s local planning powers away from the Council if it doesn’t look as though the job will be done by the end of 2023. Given a good wind, which seems unlikely under the UDC/R4U anti-cyclone, a new Local Plan would take 3-4 years to conceive and deliver.

In the meantime, the Residents for Uttlesford Party will be presiding over planning chaos in and around all our towns and villages in the absence of an up-to-date Local Plan. Developers will be given near freedom to build what they want, where they want. It’s as bad as that.

The People elected the Residents for Uttlesford Party on the promise that R4U could and would do a better job at planning than the Conservatives before them. R4U’s first thirteen months have been a disappointment. We may all pay a big price.

Populism may not be pretty. It’s time Residents for Uttlesford were held to account.