Local Plan - final consultation now open!
The final consultation on the North East Derbyshire draft Local Plan is now open and will run until 31st January. This final consultation is a highly technical one but is our final opportunity to try to get the remaining four greenbelt sites (2 in Dronfield, 2 in Killamarsh) still in the plan out of it - and to confirm that the earlier ones (in Eckington, Coal Aston, Dronfield) which were proposed to be removed in 2019 stay out.
We need all residents who can to get involved and to submit their views to the independent Planning Inspector before the 31st January. (This date was originally the 23rd December but following successful campaigning from your local Conservative councillors this date was moved back to allow sufficient time for responses). We held 4 online meetings to go through what is happening and how you can respond - and if you didn't manage to attend but would like a further meeting please contact Lee on lee.rowley.mp@parliament.uk.
You can respond to the consultation in the following way:
- By letter: write to Planning Policy Team, North East Derbyshire District Council, 2013 Mill Lane, Wingerworth, S42 6NG, quoting "Consultation on Main Modifications"
- By email: write to local.plan@ne-derbyshire.gov.uk quoting "Consultation on Main Modifications"
You can also respond via the North East Derbyshire website (www.ne-derbyshire.gov.uk and search on "Consultation on Main Modifications (new)"). The form is not the easiest to fill in so we would recommend either to respond by letter or email.
We have also produced a series of factsheets for individual areas with arguments as to how to respond to the consultation. You can find all 4 factsheets below.
Local Plan - cleaning up a decade of failure in North East Derbyshire
For more than a decade, North East Derbyshire District has been buffered by inadequate leadership on planning. This has been caused by the lack of a local development plan by the previous District Council who left our area open to speculative development for far too long from developers building too many houses and often in the wrong places. When I was elected in 2017, North East Derbyshire residents had become tired and cynical about a planning system that had gotten out of control and a District Council that didn't seem to know how to solve it:
- Every local authority is supposed to update their local development plan saying where houses should and shouldn’t be built – yet North East Derbyshire hadn't updated theirs since 2005
- Every Council is supposed to be able to demonstrate that it has a supply of land to be built on for the next five years – but North East Derbyshire couldn't do that for many years and so had to adopt a policy in 2010 which allowed development on the periphery of villages and towns where it wouldn’t normally be permitted
- Every village and town has the opportunity to make its own decisions about where new development should go if it is needed – but the old local Council was not active in promoting these ‘Neighbourhood Plans’ and so only a few communities in North East Derbyshire pursued them initially
- Every Council should actively engage with their local community to talk about planning – yet the old Council was not vocal enough for years and residents felt short-changed that they didn’t had the opportunity to shape plans which would have changed our area significantly
I campaigned in 2017 against bad planning decisions and to try to sort out the mess which the Council had gotten us all into. And I know it wouldn't be easy - irrespective of who is in charge, planning can often be challenging and all Councils have a difficult job to get the balance right. The building of new houses can be controversial and there are difficulties in selecting locations which residents can support. Worse still, turning round failing planning policies take time - the seeds of the problems from 2015 onwards were sown years earlier and I knew it would take time to resolve them.
In early 2019, we had some success when we managed to convince the Planning Inspector to change an earlier version of the Council's local development plan to remove some of the building on greenbelt around Dronfield and Eckington. This was a very positive step forward and testament to the power of local residents, campaigners and Councillors.
In May 2019, the residents of North East Derbyshire replaced the old failing District Council with a new team who was dedicated to trying to improve the planning problems for the long-term. And, over the last few months, I have been helping them to review what was left by the previous administration, to help improve what the Council is doing and to plot a new course which gets us to a better place. The draft local plan was paused for a fundamental review and the Council spent a number of months reviewing what was feasible at this late stage in the adoption process.
In Spring 2020, the Council announced it would re-start the process to adopt the local plan and informed the independent Planning Inspector to hold the final stage of hearings. The draft plan remains sub-optimal in a number of places and, along with your local Councillors, we are going to make the case to change it further as part of these final hearings.
There remains much to do on planning and, whatever happens with the local plan, we still will need a number of years to fully right the ship. Yet, the Council are working hard to bring some order to planning in North East Derbyshire and, vitally, we have taken a major step forward in the last year. As your local MP, I pledge to continue to try to work to improve the plan in the coming months and then to work with the Council to put planning on a firmer footing for the 2020s.
