In her column last week, Cllr Emily Young analysed the progress of the new East Hampshire Local Plan. What she has done is add further encouragement to developers looking to pounce.

EHDC’s Local Plan was on track in 2024 but has been delayed by the Government’s huge increase in housing numbers. Local Plans cost a lot of money and time to prepare, and the cost of getting it wrong and being sent back to the beginning is not a risk this council is willing to take. Many other councils have found this out when they fail at the first stages of examination.

In 2022, our neighbours Havant Borough Council found out the hard way, having to withdraw their Local Plan from examination following concerns raised by the Planning Inspectorate. More recently, other authorities, such as South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse; Horsham District Council; and Shropshire Council were forced to withdraw local plans at considerable financial and reputational expense.

Plan making is complex and made more so in East Hampshire because 57 per cent of the district is within the South Downs National Park. EHDC has taken considerable steps to lobby the Government for recognition of the constraints we face associated with the SDNP, but they’ve not listened.

Cllr Young suggests that submitting our Local Plan before the increase in housing numbers would have saved us from speculative housing proposals. The truth is that it would have just discouraged applications for a very short amount of time. The Government has made clear it wants councils to start planning for the higher numbers – even if they have with a newly-adopted Local Plan.

Recent examples across the country show that even newly-adopted Local Plans are now being required to produce revised plans if they fail to meet updated housing targets, often at significant cost. And they face further sanctions, including the need to demonstrate increased housing supply. That would lead us to the same position of speculative development that we are in now and greater uncertainty for communities. We would be straight into a Local Plan review and paying to go through the process all over again, spending even more of taxpayers’ money.

The Government has set up the planning system with no ‘get out of jail free card’. All those councils that have speeded up and got a new Local Plan in place quickly have been required to immediately review and deal with the high housing numbers, and are also subject to the buffers on five-year supply.

What I want to make clear is that this Government wants to build a lot of houses, and it is not going to take no for an answer. However much you feel the countryside here must be protected, just like I do, the Government does not share that view. Its priority is growth and house building. To get a Local Plan in place, many more sites must be included in the Local Plan. This isn’t because the Local Plan is delayed, it is because this Government has prioritised housing development. This applies to all councils whatever stage they are at (even with adopted plans).

It is not entirely a bad thing, we do need growth, affordable houses, infrastructure and more young people to sustain our district.

Cllr Young says, “Nowhere illustrates this better than Four Marks and Medstead, where more than 1,000 homes are either approved or under application. Yet there is no new surgery, no meaningful road upgrades, and no expanded community facilities.”

To be clear, infrastructure funding has been allocated to both GP surgeries in Four Marks & Medstead to expand. The council has worked closely with the health organisation to achieve this. £1.25m of infrastructure funding is allocated to Four Marks Parish Council to deliver a new community building. Four Marks and Medstead is the only parish in our district that has a bespoke transport model recently created to ensure the transport implications of applications can be looked at properly. We have worked closely with Hampshire County Council to deliver this.

Over £12m of infrastructure funding has been allocated to date by this council to projects across the district (including over £2m to projects in Four Marks and Medstead). We are a council that allocates the money we receive from development for infrastructure, unlike Waverley Borough Council in Surrey which has been reported in the press to be sitting on this money as a revenue stream.

In all, yes, like most councils, we’ve experienced some delays. These were initially due to Covid and changes to the planning system, and more recently because of the huge increase in the housing number.

But let me say this, it is not those delays that are the reason for speculative housing applications in your neighbourhood. It is the Government’s reliance on house building to ‘balance its books’ for the budget, and the Government’s non-wavering commitment to growth at any cost.

Be careful what you wish for Cllr Young, as there is always a catch. The catch in this case is Rachel Reeves needs to balance the books, and she needs new houses on countryside in East Hampshire to do so. And you’ve just told developers that loud and clear.

Cllr Richard Millard is the Conservative leader of East Hampshire District Council.