Planning authorities in Suffolk will be operating in a vacuum of uncertainty after the publication of a blueprint for more than 60,000 new homes in the county was delayed until the end of the year.
That’s the verdict of Suffolk Preservation Society (SPS), which is warning that, in the absence of clear guidelines, district planners may find themselves making decisions blindly.
The Government Office for the East of England has delayed the publication of the East of England because it says it needs more time to work on it.
But SPS director Richard Ward said: “A lot of the local development frameworks will have been prepared by local authorities in a serious policy vacuum because the final version of the strategy is unknown. This is not an ideal position, and one made more serious by the fact that we have not been given a date when it will be published.
“Planning decisions made now will affect our communities for years to come. Suffolk was originally told that it needed to accommodate a maximum of an additional 60,000 homes by 2021 – that figure was later changed to a minimum of 60,000 with no definite upper limit. District planners are being asked to make massive decisions while effectively being blindfolded by the government.”
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* SPS is the county’s leading conservation body, with a growing membership of more than 2,000 people. It is a county branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. For more details about SPS, visit www.suffolksociety.com
For more information contact:
Richard Ward, SPS, tel 01787 247179, or
Nicola Brown, Geronimo Communications, tel 01284 768935