Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Planning Committee held in the Council Chamber, Council Offices on Tuesday 23 August 2016.

Present: Cllrs. A. Vaughan (Chair), A. Aldis, S. Boughton, M. Newton, N. Tile, K. Read, N. Lodge and F. Richards.

Colchester Borough Cllrs: R. Scott, C. Liddy and M. Cory.

From Colchester Borough Council – Ian Vipond - Strategic Director, Karen Syrett - Place Strategy Manager and Chris Downes. Bryn Morris from University of Essex.

From Wivenhoe Neighbourhood Plan Group – Peter Hill and Jane Black.

Peter Kay, Public Transport Representative.

Alan Harwood and Phil Finn.

Member of the Press from Gazette.

Prior to commencement of business safety announcements were given by Cllr. Vaughan.

Cllr. Vaughan welcomed all to the meeting advising that the first part of the meeting would be taken up with the Colchester Borough Council Local Plan Preferred Options and after a short break the normal business of the Planning Committee would commence.

1. MINUTES.

RESOLVED that the Minutes of the meeting held on 12 July 2016 be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

2. CBC DRAFT LOCAL PLAN PREFERRED OPTIONS.

Colchester Borough Council has published its preferred Options for its new Local Plan under Regulation 18 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012. The primary role of the document is to set out the required housing delivery growth and other land use requirements for the District, to allocate sites to meet that growth, and to produce policies for the determination of planning applications up to 2033. It also includes proposals for strategic development for north Essex.

An event to publicise this had been held at the William Loveless Hall on Thursday 21 July and the Town Council had organised a leaflet drop to make residents aware of this and a press release had been publicised.

Following on from this the Town Council’s Planning Committee had invited officers from Colchester Borough Council to a Special Meeting to address the Town Council’s concerns. Cllr. Vaughan welcomed Ian Vipond, Karen Syrett, Chris Downes and Bryn Morris to the meeting, advising that a comprehensive list of some of the Town Council’s questions and concerns on the CBC Draft Local Plan had already been sent to the officers in order for a measured response to be prepared.

Cllr. Aldis read these out - these were as follows:

·  Is the June 2016 AECOM report a supporting document to the Local Plan purely in the sense of setting out generalised visions for what garden settlements are intended to be like, or do the various layout plans of each settlement represent an intended 'plan'.

Karen Syrett responded that the AECOM report is one of 3 documents produced for CBC along with Tendring, Braintree and ECC. It is going very high level and does set out visions and various options for all of the possible Garden Communities, they are not intended to provide layout plans for each settlement.

·  Is the submitted Local Plan required to define a specific area for each settlement (as the Tendring plan does) or does a 'study area outline' suffice the government instructions.

Karen responded that they were not dealing with the submitted Plan at this stage. It is a draft plan which is called the Preferred Options. The submitted Plan will be published in January time and there will then be more detail in the submitted plan defining a specific area for each garden community. Karen did not think it would go as far as specific land uses divided up within that area but the boundaries will be defined and the Tendring Plan is slightly unfortunate and slightly misleading in terms of showing a boundary line and in fact a possible road route, none of that has been defined as yet so she just wanted to reassure the Town Council that this was the case. Karen also said that they are not the only ones to make mistakes as they have actually allocated a bit of Tendring land in their plan.

·  Is the East Colchester Masterplan to be finalised PRIOR TO the submission of the Local Plan. Will it be a supporting document too?

Karen said she presumed the Masterplan meant was the AECOM plan work that has been done to date. If so they will be doing some more master planning work between now and the submission of the local plan which will indeed provide support for documentation to the plan itself.

·  If so will the consultation on it count as a [re]consultation on those settlement-related aspects of the Local Plan that it is currently impossible to comment on because of the absence of specificity. More masterplan work being done.

The next stage of the master planning work will involve community engagement and Karen sees the Town Council as being critical to that engagement and then there will be consultation on the next stage of the local plan early next year. They are intending to go to the committee in January 2017 and consult in February/March time. That is a formal stage whereas the master planning engagement is an informal stage in the process.

Other Town Council concerns raised were:

·  It is stated in the text that CBC has been consulted by ECC on the Colchester-Clacton and Colchester-Harwich route strategies studies (which are not available to the public). The results of these strategy studies will presumably be highly relevant to the transport un/viability of an East garden settlement, so will there be more detail in subsequent manifestations of the Local Plan for commenting on.

Karen confirmed that officers from CBC and Tendring were invited to a workshop which was hosted by ECC regarding the A133 Colchester-Clacton route based strategy. The potential growth in the east Colchester/west Tendring area is referenced in the route based strategy in a base line review report, the base line review is an ECC document and needs ECC permission to release. She is not aware of being consulted on the Colchester-Harwich route based strategy – the A120 is part of the Highways agency road network rather than ECC. Most of their focus has been on the A120 to the west of Colchester at this stage.

·  It is now some seven years since the busway alongside the railway (which appears to be a principal device on which the transport viability of the East settlement rests) was defined in the last local plan process, but there is still no evident undertaking from ECC that they would agree to build such a scheme, or demonstration of how it could join the existing roads at St Botolphs, or explanation of how the buses will be able to cross Hythe LC without unacceptable delays once train services are increased as foreseen. Without all of which it is merely a line on a map of no substance. The prolongation busway is also shown as crossing Greenstead Roundabout in an impossible manner, which appears to be merely an admission that there is not actually a practical route for it.

Karen - Further feasibility work has been undertaken with ECC, assessing the demand, reviewing routes and linking together possible new community, the University, the town centre and Colchester Railway station and a number of potential modes of transport have been looked at. In line with the principal of garden community development, in particular planning new communities around a step change into sustainable transport, it is believed that providing a rapid transit system helps to fulfil the principal. Detailed design have yet to be undertaken and the lines on the map are purely indicative at this time so further work will be required for that aspect.

Cllr. Tile put the question - How do you propose to exercise your powers to ensure that it is not developers that plan the new town?

In answering this question Ian Vipond wished to put into context why garden community developments were being looked it, (full transcript) :-

When we started to look at the local plans/review this time around what we were aware of is the shortage of housing nationally we knew that we would have a substantial number of housing and jobs to provide over the next local plan period. What also became clear is that both Tendring and Braintree were seeing their housing needs grow substantially so what became clear was that the north Essex districts together would get a substantial housing requirement and indeed job requirement so we questioned how best that could be provided, not just for this local plan period but for future local plan periods and in some sense that is what we are doing different than perhaps certainly ourselves last time but certainly most local authorities in trying to find I think some ideas, solutions that could address that housing need which won’t go away, not in the next decade or the next decade or the decade after that, so how do you keep providing for jobs and housing in that sort of context in this sort of locality across north Essex.

I think we also recognise that we, although Colchester as a borough has met its housing needs well over the last decade, that’s not been without issues and those would be the issues that I think as a planning committee you will have come across on almost a weekly basis.

Providing housing particularly but meeting employment needs also in existing settlements is usually done on the boundary of that existing settlement in a way which generally provides a lot of the problems for existing residents, often without that much benefit to existing residents and you'll be fully aware that we continually struggle with planning agreements, negotiations within the reasonable planning requirements and the sites, up against, as everybody is, with the dilemma that government wants to see housing delivered and that means that we don't get all that we might wish for from developers around affordable housing, education provision, visions for highways - something in the end has to give in those conversations. So we enter the debate about looking at garden communities as a different way of providing for the housing needs for this locality, for the long term so this isn’t just about this ten, fifteen year period in a the local plan, its about the next and the one after that and how can you do that in a way that allows you to strategically plan for development that gives you the benefits that most people would, especially those associated with planning committees, would recognise would be critical to delivering a sound base for communities - how do you get the roads you need, the rapid transit links that have been on the books for years, how do you get the educational contributions that provide schools not ten years late but actually when they're needed, where do you get the health facilities. So the issue is not just where that development takes place its how you control that development in a way that gives you the power to ensure those facilities are provided in a timely way and you do that in a number of ways, and the essential way that garden communities potentially allow you to do that is that the local authorities themselves take a primary role in the development of the settlement such that the accountable body would be controlled by the local authorities and the delivery bodies would be funded potentially by funding from the public sector, particularly through the councils and that’s what gives you control, so you have control through representation and control through financial investment and that way you can begin to control what the developers actually develop on the ground. It’s a long answer, but an important answer to understand where we are here and having this debate.

The Town Council were concerned that it would appear that the garden settlement schemes are being prematurely pushed forward to meet a Local Plan timescale, before any evidence has actually been obtained to demonstrate their practicality.

Cllr. Read asked if there was a guarantee that there will be a school.

Ian Vipond responded saying that the policy already says that in terms of the scale of the proposal a secondary school will be required, the master plan would be allocating a sum, the finance will be provided from the developer through the local development vehicle, as said before it will be more akin to a new town than a normal development situation. He would like to see the University involved in the new community which would be on the doorstep of the University.

Bryn Morris (University) stated that it in terms of the University expansion they will be keen for any new settlement to be providing the full range of services that new staff coming to work at the University and graduates looking to stay and live and work in Colchester will find attractive and they are really keen to work with the local authority to promote this ethos of infrastructure and facilities being developed alongside the development of housing rather than constantly playing catch up with the infrastructure to keep pace with the an unplanned incremental approach to residential development which is always much harder to support in terms of physical infrastructure and local services including health and educational support for residents. The University is really keen to work with local authorities in pursuing what a very bold and exciting new planned approach to meet the housing needs of the local area.

Cllr. Aldis was concerned that ECC would not support a school. Cllr. Cory asked if ECC could be legally bound to support a school adding that it would be bizarre if a school was built and there was no-one to run it.

Ian said that the initial funding for the whole development would be met from the sale of the land. A phasing programme would be needed and LDVs.

Cllr. Aldis asked what was the percentage of housing for Tendring/Colchester. Ian said that this was not known yet. Also a question was raised about Wivenhoe’s Health surgery and how they would cope with an influx of residents. Again Ian stated that new facilities were easier to plan when dealing with a new community rather than having to retro-fit afterwards. It was far easier to plan for all community buildings when building from scratch.