Transcript

in the meeting of full council. May I ask the mayor's chaplain, Muhammad Vdawan Ahmed, Iman of Guilford Central Mosque, to say a prayer. Thank you Deputy Mayor. Good evening everyone. [Singing in foreign language] [Singing in foreign language] [Singing in foreign language] May we begin with a prayer to praise the Almighty, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, for He created us all in His own image. He gave us good health and the ability to understand one another. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala have mercy us all and guide us further by standing our bonds with the community. May Allah bless this wonderful town and its generous good people of Guilford. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala forgive us all in any of our shortcomings. Allah please keep everyone safe from any illness or disasters and if not then they stand to overcome them. Please cure the sick who are bed, ridden and in hospitals. Help those who are suffering from property around the world. May the Almighty Creator show us with His blessings and His grace to the mayor, Deputy Mayor, His fellow councillors and officers in these meetings and their families. We remain forever grateful for you bringing us all together in your remembrance today in order to uplift your name and guide you the highest of appreciation. Thank you Deputy Mayor. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Before we begin I have a few housekeeping comments to make. First of all may I ask that you switch your mobile devices to silence for the duration of this meeting. If the fire alarm sounds at any time during the meeting and we are not expecting it to go off everyone in the chamber should leave immediately through the nearest fire exits. Please proceed calmly to the assembly point which is in mill mead on the paved area adjacent to the river as you exit the site. I would like to remind everyone present that this meeting is being webcastied live to the internet and will be capable of repeated viewing. If you are seated in the council chamber it is likely that the cameras will capture your image. You are deemed to be consenting to this and to the use of these images and sound recordings for webcasting and/or training purposes. If you are speaking at this meeting your contribution will be recorded and broadcast. If any councillor wishes to raise point of order at any time may I remind you that the purpose of a point of order is that to ask the mayor or the person presiding at the meeting to rule on an alleged irregularity in the procedure of the meeting. A point of order shall relate only to the alleged breach of council procedure rules or the law. The councillor must state the procedure rule or law and indicate the way in which they consider it has been broken. Finally may I ask councillors to ensure that they keep within their allotted time when they speak at this meeting and try to avoid repetitious comments during the debates. Item one apologies for absence. May I ask the democratic services and elections manager to report apologies for absence. Thank you very much Madam Deputy Mayor. Apologies this evening from the Mayor councillor Masuc Mere and councillors honour Brooker, Ruth Brothwell, Matt Furness, Sandy Lowry, Meryl Rehorst Smith and Katie Steele from honoree Freeman, Keith Churchhouse and honoree Alderman, Catherine Cobbly, Jane Marks, Tony Phillips, Linda Strudwick and Jenny Wicks. Thank you. Item two disclosures of interest. May I remind councillors who have a disposable pecuniary interest in any matter to be considered this evening to disclose the interest now and withdraw from the meeting when we get to the relevant item of business. Are there any disposable pecuniary interests? May I also ask in the interest of transparency whether any councillor wishes to disclose a non-pecuniary interest which may be relevant to any matter on tonight's agenda and to confirm that it will not affect their objectivity in relation to that matter. Are there any non-pecuniary interests? Councillor Bigma. Yeah, better safe than sorry but in regards to the question that I asked as chair of the Royal Surrey Foundation Trust they have an interest in a potential ransom over the over the Blackwell site allocation. So I just put that on the record. Thank you. I think we've got it though. Any others? Is it de-closable pecuniary sorry? I'm not sure. I'm just better safe than sorry. So the hospital has a potential claim on the ransom the same as the council. I'm chair of the Trust. It's non-pecuniary. Whether it's an interest or not I'm not sure but it's in regards to this. Thank you. Anybody else? Item three the mayor's communications. Before leaving for a well-deserved rest the mayor joined Guilford Hong Kongers for their new lunar year market at Guilford Cathedral on Saturday the 10th of February and very much enjoyed the meeting over 60 stall holders who served over 5,000 people during this popular event. On a rainy show show of Tuesday afternoon last week Guilford saw the return of the popular pancake races. Following the mayor's opening of the event the teams had great fun and the Charlotte Jubilee Trust who organised the event were delighted that 1,000 pounds was raised for the Guilford Street Angels. One of the mayor's last engagements before his break was to join representatives from Rotary and Guilford in the Vivati Chorus as they presented funds raised by the mayor's Christmas concert. Ticket sales raised an amazing 3,000 pounds for the mayor's local support fund and the retiring collection raised just over 1,300 pounds for the fountain centre. Huge thanks to everyone involved in organising this popular and new event. Finally you all I hope have noticed the splendid new portrait behind me of his Majesty King Charles III which we have obtained free of charge under a cabinet office scheme announced last year to allow public authorities across the UK to apply for a free framed portrait of his Majesty to celebrate the new reign. Item four, a leader's communications. May I ask the leader of the council to comment on the her communications which I'll refer to on page two of the order paper. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor. Yes I've just got four announcements today as set out on the order paper. The first one relates to crowd fund Guilford in the free workshop. We need your help to spread the word about crowd fund Guilford so join us and sign up to our upcoming virtual workshop on Friday the 8th of March. You'll gain valuable insights into how residents can access support and funding for their ideas and projects. Learn first hand about the resources available, the application process and how we can help in bringing community initiatives to life. If you already know a resident or group with an idea then please encourage them to come along to talk to us about it. It's completely free and easy to get started. You can sign up to our workshop and find out more about crowd fund Guilford by visiting www.spacehive.com/movement/guilford. Next is our Pride in Surrey announcement. We proudly announce our role as the host city for the 5th anniversary celebration of Pride in Surrey set to unfold at Stoke Park on Saturday 21 September 2024. We have immense pride in our diverse community which includes a high representation of LGBTQ+ residents. Recognising the significant this event has to our residents we are honoured to support Pride in Surrey's annual event at Stoke Park. Tickets for the September event are now available via the Pride in Surrey website and are offered on a pay what you can basis keeping Pride accessible for as many people as possible. Moving on to our museum which has retained Arts Council accreditation. Our museum has retained its full accreditation from Arts Council England which recognises the hard work that our heritage team have put into every aspect of our museum from looking after our collection of objects to meeting relevant standards for policies and procedures. Congratulations to the team. And finally public inquiry for planning appeal at Land at Guilford Cathedral. An appeal will be determined by public inquiry. The inquiry opens on the 5th of March 2024 and is due to last 10 days. Times and dates are subject to change as advised by the planning inspector. You can find out more information on our newsroom on our website where you can view the appeal documents, find dates and times for the appeal, and find out how to attend in person and online. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor. Do any Councillors wish to ask the leader a question in respect of her communications? Okay item five public participation. We have six public speakers this evening all of whom will be speaking regarding the main item of business on this agenda the review of the local plan. May I therefore ask the first of our speakers Julia Osborne who is Chair of Centre Parish Council to come forward to the public speaking desk. We shall inform all speakers when they have 30 seconds remaining after each of our speakers have spoken I shall ask the lead council of her planning whether she wishes to respond. You are very welcome Julia. You have three minutes which will begin once you start speaking. Good evening Councillors. The local plan adopted a spatial strategy of housing and industrial development that was controversial. It was characterised by a heavy concentration of development in the northeast corner of the borough particularly the ward of send and lovelace. To put this in context the plan proposed 10,678 homes nearly 5,000 of those homes or 44 percent of all homes to be delivered across the plan would be built in the northeast corner and 25 percent of all those dwellings would be built in the ward of send and lovelace. In addition to the allocated housing sites the last minute changed to the local plan at the hearings to double the industrial floor space at burnt common warehouses in send from 7,500 to 14,500 square metres meant the send village would now accommodate 40 percent of all industrial development in the plan. Since the removal of the villages from the green belt sends also witnessed a huge spike in windfall applications since the plan was adopted. Councillors according to the plan's own sustainability appraisal villages sit at tier 10 of the sequential hierarchy meaning they are the least sustainable position for development to take place all villages should only account for 5 percent of total supply however since the adoption of the plan 843 dwellings have been approved in send alone this is 8 percent of total supply of the plan in just one village. Furthermore strategic sites have not been delivered in the time frame expected and key road improvement infrastructure fundamental to the spatial approach of the plan has not been delivered. The A3 risk scheme has been cancelled and we've learned at the Whisley airfield appeal that that site will no longer deliver the burnt common slips. These slip roads were crucial to serve the industrial development at burnt common to alleviate pressure from the villages of send and riply. Councillors in contrast to the officers report before you this evening at appendix 3 the spatial strategy of the local plan is now not fit for purpose and it never was. The continued reliance on windfall applications without infrastructure in villages is a completely unsustainable approach. This update needs vision and it needs leadership. It needs a new spatial strategy with a town centre master plan at its core and allocated sites in villages that have not yet received approval must be removed from the plan with immediate effect to alleviate any further pressure on existing infrastructure. We also need a new greenbelt and countryside study that reapplies constraint to villages. This is a view from the parishes and I would invite the executive this evening to set out your aims and objectives that you seek from the update and what approach you will take to the spatial strategy of the plan. Thank you very much. Thank you. May I now ask the lead Councillor for planning. Councillor Fiona White whether she wishes to respond. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor and thank you Councillor Osbourne for your the information that you've put to us this evening. Can I just point out that all the Council is being asked to do this evening is agree that the plan will be updated following the officer review and their recommendation. All the things that Councillor Osbourne has been speaking about will be dealt with during the work and the evidence that we need to collect as part of the update process. So I'm afraid I can't answer any of the things that you've raised this evening. I'm afraid we haven't got to that stage yet. I hope that the Council will agree that the update should take place and can I reassure Councillor Osbourne and everybody else that we will be liaising with parish councils, residence associations and residents throughout the borough as part of this plan process. So there will be an opportunity to input into the update process at the appropriate time. Thank you. Thank you very much. May I now ask our second speaker Mr John Rigg, Chair of the Guilford Vision Group to come to the public speaking desk. You are also very welcome. Your three minutes will begin once you start speaking. Many in Guilford believe the 2019 local plan is not fit for purpose. Huge gaps, missing or bad policies, the plan costs the Tories, the 2019 election and the residents in 2023. Our town is deteriorating and the glaring omission has been a constant lack of planning vision, missing in the 2003 plan, in the 2019 plan and here we go again clearly missing from the officer's report, the opportunity to mention delivering a vision. No reference to our town or the emerging town master plan. This report remains silent on the essential evidence assembled in shaping Guilford's future. SGF, a 2.5 million pounds of taxpayers well spent money to produce a better future and replace a wholly outdated evidence base. 70% of our population live in the town, yet the only policy today, S3, had no ambitions for flood remediation, for height restrictions, density, delivering riverside homes and parks or to assist greenbelt protection. Its land allocations are incoherent and as with North Street, often wrong, 30-bound field sites in the centre and 90 across the borough excluded due to flood risk. The people of Guilford will simply not stand for this spiral of decline and lack of vision yet again. Failure not just town centre but leading to new attacks on greenbelt and insetting of more villages, that is planning failure. Councillors are also responsible. If the 1968 great flood of Guilford is repeated, a risk before experts forecast the 70% increase in our periodic upstream rainfall from climate change. The Environment Agency was energised by this council by its exciting holistic deliverable plan where government ground is then available. SGF ticks the boxes. Why would anyone abandon and disregard this emerging plan when it's mostly complete? Is it apathy or not invented here? Or a wall of credible sounding obstacles like sequential tests? And why bother perhaps if councillors are short-term agendas and an election ahead? Far too long strategic planning policy here has been isolationist and anodyne. So SGF was intentionally led by a team of external market leading consultants. It can change our declining town for the better. It is about yes we can but of course only if councillors want to make a difference. There is a choice. Thank you. Thank you very much. May I now ask the lead councillor for planning Councillor Fiona White whether she wishes to respond? Madam Deputy Mayor, with your permission as saving shaken Guilford's future, falls within my colleague Tom Huntsport Vario. May I ask him to respond? Yes, you may. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Councillor White. Thank you, John Rigg. Welcome back. It's like old times, isn't it? May I start by congratulating you on the resumption of your vocation as chair of the Guilford Vision Group. So let me reassure you, or let me start by saying that as Councillor White has already already stated, all we're out tonight is the decision to update the local plan. We're not talking about any details of it and I wholly agree that the evidence base needs re-looking at and Mr Rigg will be pleased to know that we have no intention of throwing away the work done through shaping Guilford's future. The regeneration team is already working with the planning policy team sharing the data that was gathered during the Shape and Guilford's future programme and we tend to reuse it. I'm really excited by the opportunity to develop some of the town centre sites within the local plan but front and centre has to be the flood alleviation scheme. It's really important. It's going to unlock a whole wealth of opportunity within the town centre and that work is absolutely progressing. I have a meeting with the environment agency tomorrow to move it along. So I hear you, John, and I think that we're moving in the right direction. Thank you very much. May I now ask our third speaker, Mr Alistair Smith. Point of order, Madame Deputy Mayor. Yes. According to the order paper, after responses to the public speaker, there is a section for questions from Councillors. Should the assembled council not have been invited to put questions to both Mr Rigg and of course the previous speaker, Councillor Osbourne. The item on questions from Councillors follows this item on public participation. Grateful for that. It appears directly after response to public speaker is perhaps somewhat confusing. Okay. Thank you. Carry on. May I now ask our third speaker, Mr Alistair Smith, who is now sitting in his seat. Chair of the Guilford Society, you're very welcome, Alistair. Your three minutes will begin once you start speaking. Thank you. Good evening. The society has reviewed the webinar of the executive meeting on this subject and the supporting papers. It supports the council initiating a local plan update. National planning policy is in turmoil as an example, possibly three significant updates to the MPPF over 18 months. The Guilford local plan needs to be robustly developed to cope with this churn. A detailed plan and budget for the update is due to be prepared for approval. The following should be included in the plans. Firstly, the evidence base. At the executive meeting, Councillor White was very clear to say the evidence base needed to be fully updated. We agree. The evidence base must also include initiatives such as the economic strategy and the outputs from the shaping Guilford future program developed across the circa 2.5 million plans. Secondly, infrastructure. The revised local plan must lock in required infrastructure improvements, especially if we have to handle increasing housing numbers. Mr Jonathan bore the inspector of the current plan questioned robustly in the delivery of improvements and supporting infrastructure. His concerns have been well-founded. Major developments in an updated plan should be declared non-deliverable and less supporting infrastructure is delivered, e.g. flooded remediation. Thirdly, timescale. The local plan update is likely to take circa three plus years. Councillor White expressed caution on achieving a 30-month timescale proposed by central government. We cannot wait for three years. Alongside the local plan update, the Council must be prepared to draft and add extra policies on matters such as heights, a major concern to the society, and potentially for selected sites areas to guide development. A policy and draft carries weight in the planning process. Councillor Potter commented at the executive that the update should be viewed as an opportunity to address the issues, including town centre and river side, brownfield sites, affordability, etc. We totally agree. The society should add several more to this list, including design quality and standards. Why we can't have a scheme of the quality consented in Lewis, for example, last week, transport, pollution and the environment. Guilford deserves better. We need a quality local plan that properly, as the MPP, F-states, details on development needs, aligns growth and infrastructure, improves the environment and responds to global warming, which we don't have at present. Thank you very much. May I now ask the Councillor for Planning, Councillor Fiona White, whether she wishes to respond? Very briefly, Madam Deputy Mayor, I am going to repeat what I said to Councillor Osborne, which is that this evening all we're going to do is hopefully agree to update the plan. All the things that Mr Smith has mentioned will be looked at as part of that update. And I would like to thank him for sending the paper that he done on Heights Policy, which I've already passed on to the planning policy team and they are looking at it. We are certainly not going to ignore any of those things as part of the update process, assuming the Council agrees. But as I said before, I can't answer any detailed questions on what is likely to happen as a result of the update, which must be evidence-based. Thank you. Thank you very much. May I now ask our full speaker, Mr Malcolm H chair of Oaken Parish Council, to come to the public speaking desk. You're very welcome. Your three minutes will begin once you start speaking. Councillors, as chair of Oaken Parish Council, I would like to focus the attention of the Council on the failure to deliver as planned the infrastructure, which unbends the current local plan. As officers have recommended, this should lead to you to decide to proceed with an update of the local plan. The problems include the lack of delivery of the A3 improvements with the burnt common slips and the RIS-3 works around Guilford not proceeding. The works at Junction 10 on the M25 are allegedly running two years late and the increase in residence has led to traffic cues and delays on the local road network. Optimistic plans for more cycling are not the answer. The failure to upgrade the Ripley wastewater works means it cannot cope with the numerous new homes already being built in Horsley and Send. The flood risk program requires much more work across the borough. Displacement is a problem across the borough. The lack of evidence of a new Howard of Effingham School is putting a strain on school places. Doctors' surgeries are refusing to take on new patients in this area, which will result in displaced residents looking further south for education and health needs. GBC's efforts to tackle climate change have not progressed. The take-up of electric vehicles has not been has been slow and there are not enough charging points. The Council will recall that the housing number forecast using the SMAR was based on inflated ONS figures which grossly overstated the student population. This is expected to be demonstrated by the 2021 Census due to be published in 2025. These inflated figures were unlikely to lead to students wanting to live in the remote locations of the strategic sites. Students have been helped by the significant levels of purpose-built student accommodation and the possible reduced demand from the closure of the law school this year. The difficulties with the former Wisley airfield as a strategic site may result in that not being available in an update of the plan. The brownfield sites in the centre of Guilford have reduced demand for retail and are available for residential development. The housing number has benefited from the large number of windfall units outside the plan and the huge demand for delivery materials has led to severe damage to our roads. US research has shown that the damage to roads by one ten ton truck is equivalent to that by seven thousand cars. The recent wet weather has exacerbated the damaged potholes. Councillors, the update is necessary. I look forward to the result. Thank you. May I now ask the lead Councillor for planning, Councillor Fiona White, whether she wishes to respond? Madame Deputy Mayor, my apologies to Councillor Aish. I can only repeat what I have said earlier that we will take into account all the issues that have been raised, assuming that the Council tonight agrees to update the plan, but unfortunately I can't respond to any of the detail at the moment. Thank you. Thank you very much. May I now ask our fifth speaker, who is Karen Stevens? Okay, I'll start again. May I now ask our fifth speaker, who is Karen Stevens on behalf of Compton Parish Council and is attending remotely on teams, to switch on her camera and microphone, please. Good evening and welcome. Your three minutes will begin once you start speaking. Thank you. The last time I visited Guilford, I approached from the M25 and was shocked and saddened by the devastation that had taken place at Junction 10. The acres of woodland that have been levelled, partly in the name of delivering Guilford's local plan. This made me think about the A3 widening through Guilford, the critical infrastructure on which three of the strategic sites depend. Whilst developers may lament its removal from the government's infrastructure schedule, I'm not sure that a six lane highway severing the town is what Guilford actually needed anyway. Studies show it would do little, if anything, to alleviate local traffic. It would simply unlock thousands of out-of-town houses, all, of course, reliant on cars. So great if you're commuting from Portsmouth to London, less so if you're in the back of an ambulance, queued up on the Tesco roundabout, particularly once Blackfold Farm is built out. The Council now admits that the future of the A3 widening is uncertain. It knew this at the time of the public examination, yet it pushed through its strategic sites regardless. Now the consequences are coming home to roost. The strategic sites cannot all be delivered, and keeping them in the local plan serves no other purpose than to keep the housing figures artificially high. This inevitably risks aggressive development in the Green Belt when the five-year supply is not met. In the case of Blackwell Farm, it is also preventing the land from being designated a national landscape. Natural England has assessed Blackwell Farm as met as meriting A.O.N.B. status, and has said that it could be included within the Extended Surrey Hills National Landscape, but only if the Council acknowledges that the site is undeliverable and removes it from the local plan. Does Compton want an update of a local plan? Yes it does, but we must have more than an update. We need a wholesale revision, a plan that delivers for Guildford. The current plan is undemocratic, developer-led, and bad at the environment. It ignores the views of thousands of residents, does not invest in the town centre or brownfield areas, but instead lazily builds on the countryside sites that rely on non-existent infrastructure under anything but strategic. It's no good to just tweaking bits here and there, and trying to make a fundamentally bad plan work. This is not this is not another ready local plan. It is a local plan missing many of the key ingredients. Above all it's missing a vision of a greener, better borough. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council if you're in a white, do you wish to respond? Very briefly Madam Mayor, I can only repeat what I've said before about the decision we're here to make this evening, but can I also point out that the current local plan will remain in force while that update is being carried out, and any planning decisions will be made by reference to that current local plan during the update period. Thank you. Thank you. May I now ask our final speaker, Amanda Malarkey, on behalf of Guildford Residence Association, to come to the public speaking desk. You're very welcome. Your three minutes will begin once you start speaking. We'll need to review our plan. We don't want to be caught without a five-year housing supply based on the new formula, but we ask you to plan the timetable wisely and to get some crucial things in place up front. Without making progress on these things first, we'll be utterly vulnerable in a plan review to over development, development without infrastructure and to release of more greenfield sites. To inform and influence a plan review as part of the timetable, we need to fast-track, firstly, a height supplementary planning document to sit alongside a heights policy for the plan. The SPD would inform site allocations for brownfield sites in the new plan, allow a plan-led approach and avoid excessive allocations for brownfield sites driving up heights. Secondly, development briefs for major brownfield sites linked to flood risk management and sustainable transport plans. We don't want to be caught in the same position as last time, with brownfield sites being discounted as not ready to deliver and developers pitching for a host of greenfield sites. Site briefs would make brownfield proposals credible and avoid housing figures for sites that bear no relationship to how a site can be developed. Thirdly, sill. We don't have a sill plan to channel developer contributions from the current plan. We can't afford to miss out that important part of the plan cycle. We need effective means to secure developer contributions to infrastructure. Not only do we have no A3 improvements, we have no sustainable movement corridor. Putting these three things in place will help to mitigate some of the big challenges a plan review will trigger. For example, gaming of the system by developers who will have an incentive to talk down delivery of existing allocated sites in order to negotiate new supposedly deliverable sites as happened in the run-up to the last plan. And as another a challenge, Woking's unmet need, a glaring omission in your report. Last time we had to provide homes for Woking's unmet need under the duty to cooperate. This time, Woking's housing shortfall could be eye-watering. We'll need excellent data on our constraints and on deliverable strategies for sustainable development of brownfield sites. Otherwise, we'll be asked to look for many more unsustainable greenfield sites again. In sum, we need a heights SPD, brownfield site briefs, and community infrastructure levy plan in place to ensure this new plan review avoids over-development, development without infrastructure and further green belt release. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you to all of our public speakers tonight for your contribution. We will now move on to item six. Oh, sorry. Head of myself. Would you like to respond? Councillor McLACHLAN. That's perfectly all right, Madam Deputy Mayor. I'm sure that Amanda Malarkey will know exactly what I'm going to say by now, which is that all of the detail that she has mentioned, none of it can be looked at until we actually begin the update process, which must be evidence led. Thank you. Thank you very much. Apologies for my lapse there. So if we move on to item six, questions from Councillors. We have three written questions this evening. In relation to the first question on the order paper, may I ask Councillor Joss Bigmore if you are happy to take the lead Councillor's written response as read and move immediately to any supplementary question you may have. Yes, I am Madam Deputy Mayor. Thank you. I'd also like to thank the lead member for his response and also the time spent with me yesterday discussing the issue. Firstly, I'm pleased to see progress in the negotiations which have been going on for close to five years. But I have to say, I'm not sure I agree with the suggestion that the legally binding terms for this asset disposal should be executed under officer delegated authority, avoiding formal scrutiny by committee at this Council. I don't doubt that under the current scheme of delegation it's possible to do this, but in my opinion this is a flaw in the scheme of delegation. The scheme of delegation references physical sides of an asset without referencing value, which to my mind is wrong. Here we have a physically small asset that could be worth tens of millions. The fact that much lower value but physically larger sites have to go through a committee process seems inconsistent to me and I think it needs looking at. Further, given the energetic debate about the disposal of the line gate office complex, despite that sale following a very transparent process, the sensitivity of the Blackwell farm allocation and public interest in the site and the current level of trust residents have in this Council, I feel it's wrong to put the decision on any officer by passing a committee process. I'd ask the lead member to look again at the situation and see if there's a way for scrutiny to occur and also if the monitoring office could look at the scheme of delegation in light of this situation, an example, to see if there's any improvements we could make. Thank you. Would the lead Councillor for a regeneration like to respond? Thank you, Councillor Bigmore. I guess the key challenge with this site is that we don't yet know the value of the site because, as you know, it's an option agreement using the Stokes and Cambridge method. It will depend on what the value of the the Blackwell farm site actually is. Therefore, difficult to determine how it would navigate any governance procedure other than delegated authority. I will talk to officers about this, but what I do undertake now is to give Councillors a briefing on the option agreement once we've got a little bit closer to it. Thank you, and I probably won't attend that briefing. Are there any questions from other Councillors on this matter of rising from the responses given? In relation to the second question on the order paper, Councillor CATHLEAN Young, are you happy to take the lead Councillors written responses read and move immediately to any supplementary question you may have? Thank you, Madame Deputy Mayor. Yes, I'd like to thank the lead Councillor for her response to my rather long question, and there were probably several in there. I'm not sure it entirely answers what I was hoping to get from my question, as I'm really looking for some specifics, not generalities, as it's been quite clear our parishes and our residents are as well. But I completely understand having heard it six times now, and read all the papers, of course, that we are going to have to wait for some more specifics. So I understand it's going to take a long time, and it's going to wait, you know, we've got to wait and hear what we're going to be doing, but let's try and get started as soon as we can. Thank you. Do you wish to respond? Although there wasn't a question there, Councillor MUI? I agree. So in relation to the third question on the order paper, Councillor Young, are you happy to take the lead Councillor's written response as read and move immediately to any supplementary question you may have? Thank you, Madame Deputy Mayor. Yes, I'm very happy to take the lead Councillor's response to that. I just want to emphasise lumpy, all rollercoaster. I'm sure we can't all wait to get started. Thank you very much. Are you agreeing again, Councillor MUI? Okay. Moving on then. Are there any other questions of other Councillors? Okay. Item 7, the Review of the Guilford Vara Local Plan, Strategy and Sites, 2015 to 2034. May I now ask the lead Councillor for planning, Councillor Fiona White, to move the adoption of the motion in respect of this matter, which is also set out on page 6 of the order paper. Thank you, Madame Mayor. I would like to formally move the motion that is set out on the order paper. Would you like me to speak now? Yes? Okay. Yes, thank you. First, I would very much like to thank the Planning Policy team officers for all their work in reviewing the 2019 Local Plan and their recommendation that it should be updated. The review that they carried out was simply to look at the current plan to see whether it's fit for purpose and reflects the needs of Guilford going forward. An update means that we will go through the planning detail, gathering evidence and making any changes that are necessary. The report is very clear and sets out all the arguments, including the pros and cons. I think we're all aware that a lot of changes have happened to the way we live our lives since 2019. The update will look at all aspects of land use throughout the borough, including employment of all kinds, shopping and the need for recreation and open spaces as well as housing need. There have also been changes in national planning legislation since 2019, and an updated plan would need to reflect those changes. The work has to be evidence-based, and will include re-appraising much of the evidence that went into the 2019 plan. A lot of the initial stages will be working out how to gather that evidence. The 2019 Local Plan will not be redundant in all this. It will still be the primary consideration for deciding planning applications until the update process is completed and the updated plan adopted. I must stress from the start that the decision the Council having asked to make this evening is only whether or not to update the plan, as you've heard me say, six times already. Any update has to be evidence-based, and if we agree, the next step will be for officers to prepare a further report setting out timings, process and the budget needed for the work to be done. The Local Plan update can only be carried out in line with government policies. We do not have a blank sheet of paper where we can just set out what we want as a borough. One of those policies is as a standard method for calculating housing need. As you will see for the report in paragraph 7.18, it is likely that that will increase from 562 dwellings per annum to 771. We will be looking first at Brownfield sites, particularly in Guilford Town itself. The requirement to look at Brownfield first is national policy and has been for some years. The planning policy team do have access to the work done under shaping Guilford's future, and that will be taken into account as part of the process. There are other parts of the town as well that could contribute to the changes that are likely to be needed. Planning and regeneration go a hand in hand, so I will be working closely with my colleague Councillor Tom Hunt to make sure that we come up with the best solutions that we can. Another unknown that we will have to deal with is changes to national legislation. We all know there will be a general election later this year. I cannot predict the outcome of that election, but both of the major national parties have said that they want to make changes to planning legislation. Those changes are likely to come into force while the update is taking place. The planning policy team will be monitoring what is happening nationally, and we must be ready to adapt what we are doing to take those changes into account during the process. As you will see from my response to Councillor Catherine Young, it is the intention to stand down the Planning Policy Board introduced by my predecessor in this role, Councillor George Potter, and I really have to thank George for all his hard work while he held the planning portfolio. I am very grateful for the firm basis he has set up for the work that now needs to be done. I am going to reinstate the former local plan panel that some members will remember from the last administration, and I will be inviting each of the opposition groups on the Council to send a member to the panel, which I will chair. I am grateful to my colleagues, Councillors Vanessa King and Dominique Williams for agreeing to be a part of the panel as well. The purpose of that panel will be purely as a sounding board. It won't have any decision-making powers, but I hope that members will take the discussions back to their groups so that we get input from right across the board as we go through the update process. Also, I have been having discussions with the Council's comms team on how to publicise this update so that as many people across the borough are aware of what is happening as possible and have an opportunity to comment and make their views known. Please watch out on the Council's website for updates and you may find some stuff on social media as well as it goes through. I will be liaising with residents, groups and parish councils to make sure that we are listening to everyone so far as possible. However, as I've said earlier, we will have to work to legislation set out by the National Government, including any targets for housing figures. We will mitigate those as far as we can, but I can't make any promises. Can I say to all my Council colleagues across the Chamber, you will be kept up to date about the process. Please share as much information as you can with your local communities and encourage them to take part. This update will affect the whole borough and it's important that nobody feels that it is being done to them rather than with them. Because of the need to update and reappraise evidence, this is going to be a fairly slow process and I'm sorry I know some of the speakers earlier this evening wanted it to be done far more quickly, but we've got to do it properly and we've got to get it right. Putting together the 2019 local plan took about seven years until it was adopted. As we are actually updating that plan instead of starting from scratch, I don't anticipate that this will take anywhere near as long, but I will warn everyone that it's going to be a long haul rather than a short sprint. I don't think I need to say any more now. I will ask members to support the recommendation to update the local plan. It no longer reflects our current lifestyles. Please vote for the recommendation as set out in the report. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. Thank you. May I now ask the Deputy Leader of the Council and Lead Councillor for the Generation, Councillor Tom Hunt to formally second the adoption of the motion. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. I so second and reserve my right. Thank you. I have received notification from Councillors Patrick Hoven, James Walsh, Richard Mills and Vanessa King that they would like to comment on the motion. Do any other Councillors wish to comment? Okay, just Councillor Potter then. So let's begin the debate with Councillor Oven. Would you please comment on the motion? There's been a very clear direction of travel during this evening's meeting, which as a result of I won't say many of things I would have otherwise said for fear of being admonished by Councillor White. What I would say is that we seem to be saying that there's a problem as regards numbers, in particular student numbers, but we can't do anything about it until the government advises us how we are to proceed, which would mean that at least in the early stages of this update, we're likely to be proceeding on a premise that is highly likely to be false. I trust that once we do have the new regulations from the government, if they do allow us to amend those figures, we do so, because clearly if the population figure is wrong, then the housing need will also be wrong. I would also like to indicate that in the way the planners operated thus far, it's a classic case as far as the inset villages are concerned of the law of unintended consequences. There may have been unintended consequences, but it was blatantly obvious from the moment the villages in the northeast of the borough were inset from the Green Belt, which meant that a presumption against development, apart from in very special circumstances, moved 180 degrees to a presumption in favour of sustainable development, that we would be getting far more development than that in the plan. What has happened in villages like Send and the Horsleys is that effectively we now have unplanned development. If I give an example, in Send alone, windfalls approved and built up to the summer of last year amounted to 138 dwellings. A waiting decision were a further 77 dwellings, and as recently as 10 days ago, a further nine were applied for on a site that currently comprises one house. What must happen in this update is that houses built as a result of windfall are taken off the total, because clearly those houses being built as met housing need, and that is commented on in this report, in that it has been slow to develop over the first four years of the plan, some of the strategic sites, and it's the windfalls that are effectively meeting the plan. But those houses are being built, and they should, in due course, be reduced from the total, otherwise we're going to have a very high target and added to it more and more houses that have come about simply because of the change of the village's status. I would also add that I entirely endorse my colleague Katherine Young's first question. I note that it was a detailed and specific question, but for reasons as I say, I've become extremely apparent during the course of this evening, no equally detailed and specific reply could be made. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor, I have nothing further to say at this stage. Thank you. Councillor Rorsch, would you please comment now? Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. Forgive me, I'm bongled up, so I'll try and be clear. With local plan being a contentious issue for such a long time now, it's quite hard to believe we finally reached the five-year viewpoint. It's an issue that's never felt settled or satisfactory so now. I'll keep my comments brief, not least because this is really only the start of what will be another long and detailed process and an enormous amount of work. We in the Labor Group welcome this opportunity to look at the plan, not least because of the changes that have happened nationally and locally since 2019, but also for the opportunity such a review may present in these changed circumstances. With COVID being the biggest agent of change since adoption of the plan, changes that did the way we live, work, play and shop, there are also other factors which now need to be considered as part of the review. These include changes in national planning policy, the cancellation of key info projects like the A3 capacity upgrade, forthcoming changes to the planning system and uncertainty around our true housing need. There's a lot to consider and all of it is crucial for the future of Guilford as a thriving borough with the homes, workplaces and facilities our residents need and deserve. We welcome this review as a chance to draw a line under the animosities this issue has generated in the recent past and to develop an evidence based updated plan that is fit for a changing world and one that enjoys the support of the majority of residents. A balance will undoubtedly have to be stuck between achieving this and enabling the development that the borough needs to grow rather than stagnate. We need to see high quality housing of all tenures but especially social housing for those who can't manage high mortgages and high rents. We need to see workplaces fit for the post-COVID era which may not necessarily be the traditional large scale open plan office blocks. We need to see more purpose built facilities to help smaller mid-sized businesses and also entrepreneurs who can create them and we need to see carefully planned infrastructure upgrades that will underpin it all. Now some of this has been underway since 2019 but a lot of it has been underwhelming. The stalled Guilford Park Road development and delays to developing many of the strategic sites to take two examples. Speaking personally I'd like to see this review as one of the means through which we can jumpstart shaping Guilford's future and make progress in the town centre. We want something that is more ambitious and more dynamic than just a slew of coffee and vape shops. Something that builds on Guilford's exciting past to shape a future of growth, opportunity and relevance for everyone who lives and visits here. We also want this to be an opportunity to protect those things that make our villages lovely places to live and visit. There are always going to be difficult debates about this and how we can achieve it but we believe anything is possible working in collaboration with residents, with parish councils and with all sides listening to each other and negotiating outcomes to work for everyone. Madam Deputy Mayor there's a lot to do and this is just the very beginning of a very long process that could lead to an updated local plan and positive outcomes for the borough. I hope that we in this chamber can navigate a way through this that runs with the positives and mitigate some of the heat that made the process sometimes unpleasant one to be part of in the recent past. As a result we'll be supporting the recommendations tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilor Mills would you please come in now? Thank you very much Madam Deputy Chair. Conservative colleagues broadly welcome the report as well balanced and I think well targeted and we have I think confidence in our planning officers to carry it forward effectively. So of course we do on that basis agree that there should be an update. Against that we do have of course quite a large number of specific comments but I really only want to raise three tonight. There will be a great debate I'm sure over the coming months as the government policy develops about housing targets. I think our view is basically that we should query any increase in targets that may be suggested for the town. This is not out of nimbism it's essentially because the southeast and arguably gilford in particular is suffering disproportionately from development pressures and paying the price for the failure of successive governments over many years to reduce overheating in the south and support and help the other regions. Of course within that we must remain committed to addressing local housing need but we should do what we can to resist disproportionate development as a primary objective. Secondly we must face the fact that we really do have quite a long period until the updated report is actually adopted and we feel strongly that that should not be a moratorium on policy development because there are too many significant policies before us to quote one and one which many of the public speakers have referred to. The need for better controls on building height. Most historic towns like gilford have over recent years been strengthening their defenses if I may put it that way on this issue and really we do need to take action now. I applaud the action of the previous portfolio holder on planning in initiating a working group meeting before christmas to consider this issue. We do now three months later I need to carry it out this forward. Secondly over the next three four possibly five years we do need to have an eye for promoting emerging opportunities for development before the ink is dry on the updated plan. For the for instance those emerging I think quite quickly in relation to the Bedford Wharf area around the cinema and courts. If the council is unprepared to take initiatives over those years then private developers will seize the opportunities and to the detriment of the wider public interest. Finally I do hope we should show some skepticism about the merits of a town centre master plan at this stage. The fact is that we've had quite a number posed over many years not one of them has survived more than a year or two because of rapidly changing circumstances because of financial changes of the sort. We have to be skeptical therefore of schemes that may be suitable for new plans new towns or for shopping centers abroad to have any relevance to a historic town like gilford. As I say every plan that has come forward of this kind has quickly failed. With one exception the only one that really in a sense got to partial delivery was actually and perhaps ironically the geometry system and I do think we should draw a salutary lesson from that. Thank you Deputy Chair. Thank you. Councillor KING would you please comment now. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor. What an exciting opportunity this is. An opportunity to participate in a conversation where we can take into account the views of our residents to enable creative thinking. I love the idea of a lumpy roller coaster. The local plan is a framework within which our communities can be future fit and thrive. An update is needed. Our lives are so different now to the way they were in 2019. Discussions regarding content and budget are of course material. They are matters for the update itself but I can't wait to hear more of what people want included in their local plan. Residents want assurance that the green belt will be protected and that brownfield sites will be looked at for development first. I am gratified by the assurance of the lead Councillor for planning that the views of residents associations, parish councils and individuals will be proactively sought and listened to once work is sufficiently underway. A vote for this motion is a vote to begin the conversations, to take forward ideas that work such as shaping Guildford's future and discard those that are no longer fit for purpose. I look forward to the conversation and will be voting for this motion. Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor. Thank you. Councillor Potter, would you like to comment now? Thank you Madam Deputy Mayor. A lot to begin by echoing what Councillor King has just said. This is a fantastic opportunity for updating the local plan and it is probably the most important thing that this barring sound finances of this Council will do over the next four years in terms of the long lasting impact it will have. Of course, it is worth noting that under the government's new planning format, we will get to do this every five years from now on until Kingdom come. So, plenty to look forward to there. I would also like to echo what has been said already. We have a very capable team of officers who is my privilege to work with, albeit briefly, and we have through the local plan panel in particular an opportunity for Councillors and we have heard already, opportunities will be forthcoming for members of the public, for resident associations, community groups, parishes, the entire borough to have their say in what we want to achieve in an updated local plan. But I'd also just like to sound a word of caution which is that a local plan update offers, at least at first, the opportunity to attempt to be all things to all people, to have winners without losers, and to deliver the moon on a stick. But unfortunately, anybody who is hoping to offer the opportunity will find that we soon fall foul of the rude intrusion of reality onto unrealistic hopes. Because in reality, as we should all know, when it comes to planning policy, there is much beyond this Council's control. Much of the national planning framework is up in the air, much better subject to change, and there are many questions to answer as we go through the update. But of course tonight, as has been published out, we're only here to answer one question, does the local plan need updating? And of course the answer is yes it does. We have in the standard methodationally a significant change in the government's housing target for Guildford. We have a lack of policies governing the regeneration of the town centre to provide new homes and ground field sites and to address flood risk, work on that is ongoing, but we have not had that written into the local plan. There are question marks over the deliverability of at least some of the strategic sites and how quickly they will come forwards. We also have an aiding evidence base. For instance, part of our local plan includes a character study so old that the character areas within it are hand drawn onto photocopies of street maps, because they didn't have digital mapping when this character study was commissioned. And of course we also have, most scandalously of all, the failure of transport, health and education infrastructure to materialise to support the development which has taken place, something which we must let the feet of the county council, but nevertheless is a real blight that we face. But I would just like to challenge just one thing that has been mentioned thus far, which is the idea that population numbers and projections are somehow the heart of this, and that somehow if only we can get more accurate population projections then all our problems in a local plan update will be solved. And that is simply not the case, because the standard method the government's starting point for housing targets is not based on population projections in the main. It is based on affordability. We are an extremely unaffordable area for housing, and the standard method, the formula behind it dictates that where you have high housing for unaffordability, high house prices compared to average incomes, that that is by far the biggest factor in allocating a calculated need for new housing. The goals of population projections, that affordability issue is not going anywhere, and we cannot forget that we have across this borough thousands of people facing delayed household formation, unable to settle down, unable to buy a house, unable to start families, all because of the unaffordability of housing. So those will be far more of an underlying issue in this than simply looking at population, and I would also caution people that even if regardless of what housing targets say, there is also no one simple trick to reversing the removal of land from the Green Belt in the past, because to move land from Green Belt is easy, putting it back in is hard to even if your housing targets were zero. And above all, there were difficult decisions ahead, but the most important thing is we go forward in conjunction with residents and with a vision for developing a greener and a fairer and a thriving future for a borough through an updated local plan, and I'm really glad we can be taking the first step on this journey tonight, and I'm glad to see there appears to be such unanimous support for the idea of starting on that journey. Thank you. Councilor Bigmore. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. I'll be supporting the recommendation to proceed with an update to the local plan, but I must admit I'm very keen, like all our public speakers, to move quickly to the substance of the update and the opportunity to address the shortcomings of the adopted plan as it's moved from a plan on paper to reality in our borough. I'm not seeking to downplay the potential complexity of an update as we try and balance cost and time against comprehensiveness, but it would be good to have a broad outline of a timetable as soon as possible so we know the period in which we have a plan requiring update. There are risks to a protracted process. The planning policy team have confirmed to me that the only forum at which we can challenge the standard method of assessing housing need is at public examination of the update. This means that we'll be subject to a high housing number until that time, which in all probability means that for a period we will not have a robust five-year housing supply. This could lead to unplanned development on allocated sites. We also appreciate this uncertainty in the planning system, and there is a view that we can wait and see that it seems unlikely a Labour government will be any more sympathetic to our arguments in the south-east for less housing. So I would urge that we get this going as quickly as possible because things could get worse if you share the view that we haven't seen the hopeful social and physical infrastructure delivered alongside the housing bill over the last five years. I'd also like to thank Tom and Fiona for their very positive responses and reassurance that we're going to make the most of the work undertaken on shaping Guildford's future, which doesn't appear as prominently in the report as I would have hoped. I'd also like to assure Councillor Mills that this is a completely different basis to any master plan that's previously been suggested. As has been mentioned, four years' work in two and a half million has been spent on up-to-date evidence that can be immediately used as we shape the update. There are sites that will be unlocked by a successful flood alleviation strategy which can be used to support a housing land supply in the interim period. We should be embracing the opportunities the master plan promotes and a land availability assessment. If we don't, I fear unplanned development in the countryside will result just as we're seeing wavily who haven't had a five-year housing supply for a number of years. Thank you. Thank you and Councillor LYUNG. Thank you very much, Madame Deputy there. Yes, I think we're all going to be in agreement that we need to get on and do an update to the plan. But just sitting here, I wasn't going to ask this, but I think I will now. The second part of it talks about in the actual recommendation that a report will go at a later date to the executive, appropriate timing for budget and what will be involved. But it then says such report to follow the enactment of the national planning reform legislation and to then to consider its implications. Can I seek some assurance? That doesn't mean we're either waiting for the results of a general election or any new national reforms coming out of planning because we're going to be waiting an awful long time. And as I did raise at the exec, and I know obviously we weren't the minutes for that hasn't been approved until tomorrow night, I did ask Stuart Harrison as our member of the policy team, we are right on the edge of the five years for when we need to do this. It has to have been done within five years and we are right on the edge of that in April. So how vulnerable does that leave us? So I've just got slight concern here about what that actually means and I'm going to ask the Deputy Leader of the Councillor if he can explain what we really mean by following the enactment of national planning reform legislation. Does it mean we wait? Because we'll be waiting a long time. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor HAMM would you like to exercise your reserve right to speak? Thank you. I would very briefly but Councillor Young, I'm going to defer that answer to my colleague Councillor White who will be responding in a few moments. So I'm going to keep this really pretty short because I think it's broad agreement that we need to update the plan. There are a few red threads running through the debate which I'm just going to pull out. One is the need for evidence. This needs to be based on evidence noting that gilford's requirements are materially different to the town at the time of the last plan in 2019. There are valid questions about infrastructure being raised. We've talked about the A3 improvement scheme a lot. We talked about schools and health care and these are valid questions that need to be addressed. There's a question about national planning legislation and Councillor White will have no doubt come to that. But from my perspective, one of the most exciting things is the consensus around the need to jump start treating the future. Thank you, Joseph, for your comments there. And John, at the back, still here, still hanging on. We won't waste it. Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor. Thank you. Councillor White, do you wish to exercise your right of reply on the debate on your motion? Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Mayor. I will keep it brief and first of all, can I thank everybody for their positive response to this motion? Because I do think it is essential that we go ahead with the update. Councillor Oven referred to Government's advising us on how to proceed and whether we would amend our housing numbers particularly if the Government allows. First of all, can I say that we anticipate that the new standard method will be put out in spring 2025 and that the ONS are aware of the student issue in the 2014 projections so that may no longer apply during the update of the plan. But can I also issue a word of warning? Numbers can go up as well as down and we have no way of knowing which direction they will go in. But obviously we will take account of any changes to national legislation as we go through this process. Councillor Walsh, thank you very much indeed for your positive comments and I share the view that he and Councillor King have expressed that this is an opportunity and we should look on it positively as a way of addressing some problems that we have at the moment and maybe reinvigorating our town as well as we go through this process. Councillor Mills, we will certainly query any targets that are set for housing but as has already been said, we cannot challenge those housing numbers until we actually get to the final part of the plan process. We can't start out here by saying that we don't want to take certain numbers of housing however many they may be. I was also the working group on the Heights policy. It will be a part of the review obviously and I was very pleased that the debate that we had was really talked about heights in the context of where the buildings were going to take place rather than a black and white six stories, good seven stories, bad or a specific height in metres. Councillor Bigmore is quite right to warn of the risk of the five-year housing land supply and the risks attached to it. Can I assure him and everybody else I have no intention of extending this process any longer than is absolutely necessary? It's going to be hard work and the planning policy team are already geared up to get going on it as soon as this Council agrees that this is what we want to do and Councillor Young, can I just make it very clear it's not my intention to sit and wait for any changes to government legislation and the officers will start commissioning the evidence base as soon as they've got the go ahead to do so. So having said all that, Madam Deputy Mayor, I would ask all Councillors in the Chamber to support the proposals that we go ahead with an update of the local plan. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor White and thank you to everyone for your contributions to our debate tonight. We shall now move to the vote on the motion. We're going to do this by a show of hands. May our Councillors wishing to support the motion to raise their hands now, please. Madam Deputy Mayor, I believe that's probably every member of the Council with their hands up. Quite a bit of wrong. So the motion is therefore carried. As there is no other business on the agenda, may I ask that we end the webcast? [BLANK_AUDIO]