General Discussion
What with the all the broohaha going on at the moment about the Hensford Park proposal (see page 5 of the latest edition of the Dawlish Gazette) it's very appropriate that in the same edition, on page 37, is an article explaining why TDC has to build a certain number of homes (central government dictate) and why it is important for local authorities to have a Local Plan (without one developers would have a free for all in terms of being able to develop virtually anywhere they liked).
An easy but very informative read.
I highly recommend it.
Update: The government has now backed down on its target of building 300,000 new homes per year and telling local authorities how many new homes they have to build.
According to both The Guardian and The Telegraph newspapers (newspapers from either end of the political spectrum), Local Authorities, like Teignbridge, will now be able to build fewer homes than Whitehall thinks they should if they can show that by hitting the Whitehall target it would significantly change the character of the area.
This is particularly significant to suburban and rural communities.
The impact on Teignbridge of the government moving the house building target goalposts earlier this week is that the new draft Teignbridge Local Plan, that was due to be discussed at next week's extraordinary TDC Full Council meeting, has now been put on hold. Why? Because it was put together using what is now the old location of the goal posts. So some time is needed for both the planners and others involved in producing the new Local Plan to see how what was announced a few days back will necessarily alter what has been gradually put together over the past 4 years!
The Local Plan is a document that local authorities must have in order to control what gets built and where it gets built. Without one developers would have a free for all.
So it is very important that the Local Plan abides by national planning policies. If it is deemed to not do so then developers and speculators would have a field day (sorry about the pun) submitting speculative planning applications here there and everywhere.
See page 6 of the latest edition of Dawlish Gazette for more info.