LETTER: Parish councils were naive

By supporting more development in Newick, Secretary of State Sajid Javid has clearly demonstrated that the government's priority is more house building and quite right too.

The main reason parish councils latched on to the localism and neighbourhood planning initiatives was to control and cap development, a formal manifestation of community nimbyism, albeit dressed up with lots of fine words.

The principal focus was to identify sites to meet minimum development requirements and thus prevent development at other sites. The planning inspector now says that this won’t work unless there is a specific cap on development, which would probably not be agreed anyway.

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This really should come as no surprise given the severe housing crisis and the emphasis all the major parties are now putting on substantial and sustained house building.

Parish councils were naive to believe otherwise and are surely now reviewing whether their time, effort and money could have been spent on something more productive.

Kevin Froude

Offham

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