B&NES Council has adopted a land-use policy paper setting out options for distribution of land for housing and jobs from 2011-2026.
Liberal Democrat Councillors voted to abstain on the paper citing concerns over the lack of preparation of the document. The Lib Dems have previously opposed the increased housing targets imposed by central government.
“We believe that our community should set housing needs targets, not the RDA or central government in London”, stated Councillor Paul Crossley (Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group and Councillor for Southdown).
“Whilst points in the recommendation before us tonight were in line with our policies on housing and land-use, we did not feel that the ‘spatial options’ paper was ready for publication.
“The Conservative administration of the Council has not allocated enough resources to the planning department to properly prepare the proposals – for example, we have been told that insufficient funds were available to carry out infrastructure modelling.
“However, we recognise that the Government requires this work to be done, even though the targets are undeliverable, so we did not vote against the proposals to ensure that local people would have their say and would be able to object once again to these unreasonable, centrally-imposed targets.
“A real consultation will show changes when the strategy comes back next year.“
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