Minutes of a meeting held by Sunningwell Parish Council and SPADE

Wednesday 20th April 2004

Welcome & Intro
Geoff M opened the meeting and thanked for the good turnout.

Parish Council (“PC”) actions & Report
Regarding the structure plan – the PC has written to lots of councillors and have supported SPADE with funds and wherever else they can. Hilary Lynam-Smith was appointed as SPADE interface person for the PC.

Proposed changes in dealing with planning – this Structure plan is the last the parish council will deal with in the current manner. In future planning for the South East district will be handled by a committee meeting in Guildford. PC is trying very hard to find the proposed procedure for feeding in parish views to this body. There may be further PC public meetings as more information becomes available. This is not an issue about which we can relax.

Some other points:
• 6th May – annual Parish meeting.
• 13th May AGM of village hall management committee. Grant application to Lottery fund turned down. The hall is under substantial threat. Electricity supply is unlikely to pass next test in Nov. The structure of building is damaged and badly maintained. To repair, the estimate is £80k. The problems will be discussed and new committee needs to be elected.

VOWH District Plan/ Oxfordshire County Council Structure plan
Bob Warne (SPADE chair)

2 very important meetings were held recently – Vale of White Horse (VOWH) district plan and Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) Structure Plan full council meeting on 6th April. We were invited to speak at both, both required a different stance.

Vale supports our stand and we went to give them our added support and comment on the strengthening of the plan (particularly issues on light pollution and Tilsley park!). Discussion took place regarding Grove/Wantage but the main discussion wasn’t the houses themselves, but that the houses might be built before the promised infrastructure. Changes to the plan are to go on deposit.

OCC – SPADE has been lobbying hard with the county councillors and delivered our petition of 1133 signatures. We were among 14 speakers at the meeting, 3 or 4 speaking about green belt and Grenoble road. We were amongst Oxford Green Belt Network, Oxford Preservation Trust and Orange (formed to campaign against Grenoble Road).

The full statement read by Bob Warne can be read by clicking here

Colin Thomas:
Regarding the OCC plan, the full council following the lead of scrutiny and executive committees, deleted the suggestion to build at Grenoble Rd, that was the crux of the foray into the green belt, the last minute addition in 2003.

What next?

VOWH local plan – originally published in 2002/03 and a working group working on it in 2003. VOWH plan does not suggest any large scale development in the green belt. Individual landowners have suggested that there could be development, including Penbridge. SPADE will be taking professional advice on how to approach/comment. 2nd deposit draft requires consultation only on changes in the plan. As the Vale plan doesn’t include plans for the green belt, there is nothing really immediately obvious for us to object to and we will take advice on how best we should handle that.

Regarding the OCC Structure plan – next phase (2nd deposit) will be between April 30 and 11 June 2004. It will only be consultation on elements that vary from the 1st deposit draft. For SPADE there are 2 issues. Firstly, the removal of the original wording strengthening commitment to the Green Belt post 2016. That strong protection for the green belt has been deleted from the plan. The removal of the wording is a variation so it should appear in the 2nd deposit consultation. SPADE will be taking advice on this. Secondly, regarding Grenoble Road which was deleted from the plan. This was the only major foray into the green belt which was proposed. They’ve decided against it due to the weight of public opinion and have deleted it. As it’s been deleted, it gives opportunity to be commented on in the 2nd deposit. SPADE’s intention is to run a campaign in the next few weeks supporting the deletion of Grenoble Road, and the assertion that green belt should be protected for its own worth and only built on after comprehensive and rigorous examination of the alternatives.

Every single objector who wrote last time, will get a letter from OCC inviting them to comment on the 2nd draft changes. It will be a standard form again. SPADE will be providing assistance with that and providing a standard Proforma for people who wish to use it. OCC Officers will collate those responses into a report for the Inspector at the Examination in Public.

Why bother?
It doesn’t matter what OCC thinks – the next time we go through this process GOSE will be dealing with it and they aren’t under the sway of locally elected politicians. We need to send a very firm message this time around. You can be assured that people like Thames Water and Magdalen will be commenting on the removal of Grenoble Road. We want to create a massive response. Other groups and people in the wider area will be doing the same thing (and we will be working with them). Once collated, the responses will not be reported back to OCC but reported on to the examination in public, to be held later in the year, possibly in late Summer. This is run by an independent chair who will take comments. SPADE intends to take professional advice on this too. The immediate job is to repeat the action of last time, supporting the deletion of Grenoble Road.

SPADE’s committee will be working on this in the next week to produce a newsletter and specimen forms. People may not receive their letters until part way through the 6 weeks so we’ll all need to turn them around very quickly. Any comment received after the 6 weeks, will not be included.

Geoff M
Summary
1. The District council’s local plan does not have any major incursions into the green belt and specifically rejected Penbridge
2. OCC removed Grenoble road from the structure plan.
3. Any mention of post 2016 was removed from the structure plan and we know that the consultation in future will not be done locally but removed from us.

The way forward
Bob Warne:
We need to remind ourselves that this threat has not gone away. There are significant changes in the 2nd deposit but there will be big players lobbying to reinstate the green belt proposals. We really want to stress that this is only the first stage in something which is going to go on for a long time. Things get more remote from us post 2016 and the influence we are able to exercise may be less.

We need to regenerate our enthusiasm to go through this second phase and we’re better positioned than we were in October 2003, when we had to act very quickly, but still managed to inject substantial input into the structure plan. This was due to a significant amount of support from the community. We made contacts with other groups and have a distribution network and that’s all well established. We are hopeful that we will be invited to attend the EIP, but there will be a lot of technical discussion about planning law, and it’s for that reason we will need to take professional advice. We have a substantial amount of funding to be able to do that. Those of you who are part of our lobbying / distribution network, keep your eyes peeled.

Fundraising
Announced the concert on 24th.

Questions from the floor
Mark Partridge? Based on the experience at Bicester [asylum centre], what is the feeling of the group on building in the greenbelt taking the government’s stance into account?

Bob Warne – we’re very conscious of the pressures. We are keen to see it remains protected, and retain urban sprawl. We recognise there’s pressure on the green belt and that other areas have reviewed their green belt (Cambridge) and any changes to the green belt should only be through exceptional circumstances. Clearly this hasn’t been demonstrated so far, and there will have to be a rigorous and comprehensive review of the green belt. If this comes about we will aim to be part of those discussions.

Geoff Manning – the structure plan won’t go to the government, but if specific plans are initiated, then the government might get involved.

Colin Thomas – ODPM has also been dealing with Warnborough college – it’s interesting to note that ODPM rejected scheme after scheme of small numbers of flats, and that they cited protection of green belt in preventing urban sprawl as an example of why it should be protected. There is no consistency from the ODPM. One of their public service agreements is to increase key worker housing. ODPM won’t be able to turn round quite so quickly to say there is no benefit to green belt and get rid of it overnight. The argument will be over demonstrating a compelling case. It will take many years. In the end your guess is as good as ours.

David Graham Smith: What happens when planning moves to SE regional. What political control is there over that? Is there no influence of democracy over that?

Geoff Manning – Bob Nichol has been following this very carefully. He was advised to attend a meeting to discuss procedures but found that of 249 parishes in the area, 4 places were allocated to the parishes. There was one place left when it came to it. Now we have 2 people going, but this makes us concerned about how much we can be convinced by the statement that local views will be taken into account.

Bob Nichol – my understanding is that the assembly itself consists of 111 members, but they’re not elected in the sense that county councillors are elected. 74 are elected councillors (who nominate themselves – no electoral process for that). The others are nominated. We won’t have the same kind of electoral clout as we do with county councillors. We don’t know how long their tenure is, but it’s not constructed in the same way as the county council. Part of going to the meeting, is to find out the answers to these questions.

Duncan Graham – what is the date from when they take over?

Geoff Manning – 2016. [From 2005 but will take over structure planning function completely in 2016]

Bob Nichol – actual planning will come into force after 2016 as the current plan takes us up to 2016. The strategy of planning, is starting now as far as we understand it. GOSE has already a number of strategic plans in relation to housing and transport etc, but it’s very difficult to find actual details, but clearly they are planning now. As a parish council, we must be proactive and have our own views as a result of consulting people in the parish and have a view as to how we want this and neighbouring parishes to develop so that we are pre-empting Guildford with what we want in the plans, what is important to us.

Geoff Manning – this is why I mentioned we will be having future meetings to discuss this. First we have to find the facts and figures.

Martin ? – any info or updates to proposed changes to junctions on A34?

Bob Warne - no we don’t, but will be trying to find out. We are aware of the report and the options being put about, but we don’t have enough detailed knowledge at this stage.

Peter Belk (SPADE) – Babtie have gathered all the information and they are in the process of writing a report to the highways agency on what the consultation threw up about the regional strategy of the A34. We don’t know the timeframe in which this is going to operate.

David Graham Smith – there was a piece in the Oxford Times last week – would you have a counter argument to the suggestion that Oxford and Abingdon should be linked. It’s the sort of thing that GOSE would be looking at – the economic development of the area.

Geoff Manning – clearly you must support economic development. The protagonists must show that it’s crucial to join and to me it doesn’t seem at all obvious.

DGS – there is an axis of technology though?

Bob Warne – a constructive argument for it needs to be made rather than an article in the press.

Colin Thomas – the latest buzzwords to justify development are economic development and not holding the county back. OCC recently considered the economic development action plan but it doesn’t leap to say ‘we must develop x piece of land.’ There are arguments to support development of other urban centres. The best form of economic development is to put employment where people live. It’s far more sinister that the people behind that article are lobbying outside the democratic process…..it brings you back to why 2nd deposit draft is important. That’s why we need to use the limited opportunities we have to say we don’t want the space swallowed up. If someone proves it beyond reasonable doubt, that’s different.

Geoff manning – your point’s a good one.

Sue Thomas – offered a vote of thanks to SPADE members for the huge amounts of time they have put in to keep us informed.

Bob Warne – thank you for that. Without the help from people in and outside the parish we couldn’t have done it.