\nThank you for your email dated 4 October 2013 to the Prime Minister.I have been asked to reply as a member of the neighbourhood planning team.I can understand the disappointment of the residents of Bloxham regarding recent planning appeals in advance of the emerging neighbourhood and local plans. However, it is vital that local authorities have in place a plan that addresses housing needs for the area and are able to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply.Neighbourhood planning is a vital part of the Government\u2019s reforms to help communities play a much stronger role in shaping their areas.Neighbourhood plans can allocate sites for housing and therefore help local authorities achieve their five-year land supply.<\/p>\n
I welcome the hard work that residents of Bloxham have put into producing their neighbourhood plan and would encourage the community to continue their efforts to shape development in the area.
\nKind regards,
\nBilly Roden
\nDecentralisation and Neighbourhood Planning Team SW1E 5DU<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It’s not immediately obvious which parts of the answer he thought we didn’t already know nor how dumping 200 more houses on us whilst we are in the process of preparing our I have chosen to reply as an individual rather then the N.P. coordinator.<\/p>\n Persuading residents to continue with a Neighbourhood Plan will be an uphill struggle when central bureaucrats have already imposed ten times as many dwellings as any thoughtful Local Plan would ever pile on top of recent expansion – ruining forever the \u2018sense of place\u2019 that is Bloxham no matter what plans we may subsequently formulate?<\/p>\n Most people I\u2019ve spoken to are even more angry about the charade of Localism than about the housing itself. If unwritten government policy is one of central diktat then please can you save us all a lot of time and just implement it without the absurd fairy-tale of a localism agenda when it\u2019s obvious this is deliberately scheduled to leave villages floundering helplessly against the developer onslaught? We fully expect yet another estate soon to be nodded through, irrespective of the above genuine sustainability issues, to complete a developer one-year hat-trick and push our recent growth up to 40%. As NP coordinator I\u2019m increasingly asked, \u201cWhat will be left to decide? It\u2019s all been decided for us!\u201d<\/p>\n I do not expect a reply to this as I\u2019m sure you must be very busy following your instructions to write similar emails to villages up and down the country that are also being ruined in perpetuity. I have little doubt that the recent article in the Sunday Times about rapacious developers concreting over the countryside is just the start of a growing campaign in the shires that may yet see Messrs Cameron, Pickles and Boles rue the day they decided that total disdain for good people trying to do the right thing was an acceptable price to pay for anticipated electoral advantage. They could turn out to be oh so wrong about that! Article includes modified photo David Cameron in the BH lift by BBC Radio 4 on Flickr<\/a> and David Cameron – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011 by World Economic Forum, on Flickr<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wrote to the prime minister as Neighbourhood Plan Coordinator saying how disappointed we were that our efforts at creating a Neighbourhood Plan had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,9],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-27383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-developments","category-miscellany","tag-109"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"wzslider-thumbnail":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"loop":false,"featured":false,"featured@2x":false,"featured-fixed":false,"featured-fixed@2x":false,"featured-cat":false,"featured-cat@2x":false,"single-featured":false,"single-featured@2x":false,"carousel":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"editor","author_link":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"I wrote to the prime minister as Neighbourhood Plan Coordinator saying how disappointed we were that our efforts at creating a Neighbourhood Plan had been […]","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5r5fx-77F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloxham.info\/broadsheet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"David](\"http:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5256\/5433525697_7db148d506_m.jpg\")
<\/a> neighbourhood plan can better allow us to shape the development of our village!<\/p>\n
\nWhat a coincidence that you paid \u00a3140,000 for the field next to your own home<\/a> just as the Localism Bill was going through parliament. I guess there’ll be no developers there then?<\/strong><\/div>\n
\nI am replying to you in a personal capacity rather than as Neighbourhood Plan Coordinator.
\nWe know you are just doing a job \u2013 but your email was pretty much exactly what we expected for a reply.Although we already understood it, thank you for mentioning the requirement for a Local Plan and a five-year housing land supply. As that is something over which the village of Bloxham had no local control, being punished for it remains a bit hard to swallow.And, in case you doubt we see the bigger picture, we see it all too well. We know the country needs houses and we\u2019ve seen almost 30% growth in Bloxham in the last 5 years. If people now call for a period of consolidation whilst the infra-structure catches up with previous developments that\u2019s not nimby: that\u2019s rational.
\nWe are the ones who experience electricity cuts at 6x the average rate. We are the village that already has inadequate water pressure and so many cuts in supply that Thames Water refuse to reveal the data to us. We are the village that\u2019s badly flooded twice in recent years with no alleviation measures. We are the village in which the inspector\u2019s report misleadingly states Oxfordshire Highways have a solution to major traffic problems when clearly no such solution exists. We are the village where we are told we are sustainable because we have a primary school \u2013 despite the fact it is full and will be able to accommodate almost none of the children from 160 new dwellings and which Oxfordshire CC confirm they will be unable to expand. No \u2013 not nimby \u2013 just rational!<\/p>\n
\nRegards
\nJohn Groves
\nBloxham<\/p>\n<\/div>\n