East Sussex residents 'deserve better' as MP calls on councils to protect green spaces from new developments

Maria Caulfield, Conservative MP for Lewes, met with Secretary of State for Housing Michael Gove to ask him to consider putting both Lewes District Council and Wealden District Council into special measures because of their lack of Local Plans.

Ms Caulfield said: “Our residents deserve better. Local plans need to be put in place as soon as possible to ensure mass concreting over green field space does not happen.

“I have therefore spoken with the Secretary of State as he recently put nine other authorities into special measures because of their lack of Local Plans and I have asked him if he would consider putting both Lewes and Wealden Councils into special measures to fast track their local plans.

"Not having a local plan is simply unacceptable, local residents did not vote councillors in to sit back and do nothing.

“We must protect our green spaces and I hope the councils will agree and finally put their local plans in place.”

Local plans are legal documents which set out where housing can and can't go and the infrastructure needed to support them.

Once a Local Plan is in place, neighbourhoods such as parishes and towns can then set out sites to be protected from housing in their local communities.

Local parishes and towns in Wealden and Lewes have already developed neighbourhood plans outlining where housing should go, but these are no longer valid without the district Local Plans.

A spokesperson for Lewes District Council [LDC] told SussexWorld that there are nine councils and one national park in England at risk of special measures because they didn’t meet their performance standard for processing planning applications – Lewes District is not one of them.

HAVE YOU READ THIS?

Perfect conditions make 2023 an exceptional year for marvellous May Blossom in the South Downs National Park

Passenger assaulted on board top deck of bus in East Sussex

East Sussex Bach Choir in concert

Councillor Laurence O’Connor, Cabinet member for Planning and Infrastructure at the LDC, said: "We have been working on our Local Plan since 2019 and continue to do so. However, we are hampered by the government's overly bureaucratic system that mean it takes, on average, six years to complete a Local Plan. Even the Secretary of State himself, Michael Gove, has admitted the process is completely broken.

"Special measures are not the answer. The requirement on councils to reinvent their Local Plans every five years must be removed. Our communities need this protection returned to them - and currently, government rules are preventing this from happening."

A spokesperson for Wealden District Council said: “It is interesting that Ms Caulfield has chosen this moment to approach the Secretary of State, given that Wealden has, regrettably, been without a local plan since long before the new Council was elected last month.

"The council paused production of our local plan earlier this year due to uncertainty caused by proposed national changes to the planning system by the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

"These national changes are still to be confirmed by Government. The new Council administration are reviewing progress with the local plan and will make a decision on how to proceed shortly.

“In the meantime, we are clear that continued uncertainty about national policy changes is unhelpful to progress with local plans and ask Government to clarify the position without further delay.”