00:00Hi, I'm talking to Councillor Angela Glass, who is the Portfolio Holder for Regulation and Enforcement, which covers planning, and
00:08she has some important news on the future of East Hampshire District Council's local plan.
00:13Yes, last night we issued a press release in which we told our residents that we are changing course for
00:22the direction of our local plan.
00:24Basically, government has made so many sweeping changes, there have been a tsunami of changes coming out of government, and
00:32I'm afraid that this has been the final nail in the coffin.
00:36We simply cannot carry on in the direction that we were going. We have had a raft of new policies
00:44that have come out from government, and if we have to meet a deadline of the 31st of December, with
00:51a plan that will then possibly go to inspection and not be found sound, then we cannot continue.
01:01So, we are now going to be working towards a new plan that will take in the policies that are
01:08now being propagated by the government, which may or may not come into effect in July, and this is something
01:16that we regret, but we simply cannot waste taxpayers' money on something that is possibly going to fail.
01:25So, we are going to face the future. I'm afraid this is just something yet again that has come from
01:31government.
01:32We have had our numbers doubled. The houses that we have to deliver are now expected to be double what
01:39they used to be.
01:40We are now in a situation where, because of LGR, we are losing three parishes in the southern part of
01:50this district, namely Clanfield, Horndean and Romans Castle, and we are going to have to try and squeeze development into
01:58a smaller space when we already have lost a vast area to the South Downs National Park.
02:06I'm afraid that local government reorganisation truly has been the final nail in the coffin for this, so we will
02:14now have to work towards a new local plan that will encompass new policies if and when they appear.
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