A fresh and potentially more effective approach to planning may be on the way at Uttlesford DC. Discussions are underway to try to identify more sites across the distict in towns and villages for new homes. The existing supply of planning permissions has fallen over 100 per year short of what is needed in each of the next 5 years. Developers, councillors and parish/town councils are being consulted to find out where the best places are for these homes to be built. Sites are wanted that will be developed; not ones that will become land banks for speculative developers. This is far better than having random applications in the wrong places being approved by appeal inspectors; a risk that has increased with the government’s theat that all but the most inappropriate schemes will get approval if councils don’t get their own plans in place.

Now the last time a plan was rushed through, the outcome was near disaster. That was just four years ago, when planning officers advised a concentrated exercise – which included a consultation running over Christmas and New Year – in order to pick up a government cash hand-out. That gold rapidly turned into sand, buried beneath new- and eco-town proposals. This time, I suspect the advice will be more measured and the decisions will be wiser.

Update 24 Sept: It has emerged that a list (*) of preferred sites has been in existence since the end of July and that developers have been phoned by council officers to illicit interest in their submitting planning applications. One district councillor was recently taken aback at a parish council meeting to be told by a developer that he had received one of these encouraging phone calls. The problem is that no one but a small elite of councillors knows about this unorthodox approach to planning. I have long argued that Uttlesford’s planning should be more pro-active, but this method is not transparent.

(*) Update a.m. 27 Sept: Some members and officers are denying the existence of a list of preferred housing sites, even though a list and a schedule are referred to in the minutes of the LDF working group on 29 July 2011. I must withhold reference to a list until this matter is clarified.

Update p.m. 27 Sept: There is a list. It’s just not called a list. It’s a marked up version of the Strategic Land Availability Assessment showing the sites that are considered most suitable and most available/deliverable for housing development.