Statement of Community Involvement Draft March 2023

Thank you for your email dated 11th May 2023 requesting comments in respect of the subject consultation.

Whilst I appreciate that there is a requirement to consult. Based on the track record of the 12 years I have served as a District Councillor. I have reached the conclusion presumably also shared by most members and officers that public consultations tick the box but achieve nothing other than there has been a public consultation.

The Local Plan consultations/comments is a good example. In spite of thousands of public comments, no selected site was removed from the ELP or any reasonable modification adopted.

For example the ONS reduced required housing numbers, yet all the original selected sites remained. Key council officers wanted a particular site removed, yet the Inspector (who may also have wished to do this). I imagine had been instructed that he could not and did not.

The whole process took years, cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and as far as I can see did not change at all.

Environmentally, officers and members talk the talk, yet 80% of the Local Plan selected sites are on greenbelt.

Officers have also been aware for years that the sewage treatment plants in four of the villages that I represent do not have the capacity to deal with the existing housing load. Yet houses continue to be approved and built, when planning approval could be conditional on the STP being upgraded prior to building work commencing.

In the meantime our so-called pristine chalk streams continue to be polluted.

I have spent months putting together logical arguments for and against aspects of the Local Plan. Nothing is ever accepted or changed.

A waste of my time and whoever happens to be reading this email.