AFTER spending considerable time and effort producing a detailed response for your newspaper in the light of the Planning Inspector’s decision to allow new development in Fairford, I was dismayed to read your coverage of the issue (Free rein for home builders – Standard, October 16).

Your reporter had asked some specific questions, including whether the Fairford ruling would herald a ‘free for all’ for developers, and he chose to ignore our response, including the following statement which would have given reassurance to local residents: “As part of our Local Plan preparations, we are working with external consultants to establish a sufficiently robust Objectively Assessed Need (OAN). This will provide the reassurance we need if we are challenged at appeal on housing need. In the meantime, the work we are doing to develop a robust OAN should count in our favour if any other developers consider taking applications to appeal. As the Local Plan progresses, the evidence supporting it gains more weight; however, the housing requirement figure will not be formally adopted until the Inspector’s findings on the Local Plan Examination are known.”

You also included a statement that 70 per cent of local authorities have finalised their Local Plan – we have refuted this claim on a number of occasions in public, most recently at the September 23 council meeting. Let me make this clear — as of September 2014 only four authorities (out of 348) had produced nationally-compliant, comprehensive Local Plans — in other words, plans which have sufficient detail to provide a robust defence against speculative developers.

Finally, you indicated in your Comment column (Standard, October 16) that the council could not say how long it would take before a draft Local Plan would be ready for consultation, and yet your own newspaper reported (accurately) on September 11 that the timetable had been announced at our September 4 Cabinet meeting (‘Anticipated plan is finally unveiled’). Allow me to reiterate that we will be consulting the public in January-February 2015 about the Local Plan, including development strategy, site allocations and strategic policies. Then in the summer we will conduct another consultation on the whole draft Local Plan, including development management policies, and after that we should be in a position to submit the Local Plan to the Secretary of State for independent examination by the end of 2015.

Long term planning and housing land supply are very complex issues, and the Fairford appeal proved once again that the Planning Inspectorate keeps moving the goalposts in determining planning appeals. The Inspectorate has now highlighted the need for the five year housing land requirement to be based on an up-to-date OAN. This contradicts a previous appeal decision (endorsed by the Secretary of State), which had indicated that a different requirement figure was an appropriate one on which to base the supply calculations. I am sure you will agree that it is not in anyone’s interest for your newspaper to make things even more complicated by failing to mention that only a small number of comprehensive Local Plans have been completed and by contradicting previously reported facts.

CLLR NICK PARSONS

Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Forward Planning, Cotswold District Council