LETTER: Stand up to the plan inspectors

Referring to the article by Ray Dawe on page 31 of last week's WSCT, while most residents understand the need for more houses, they do expect HDC to manage their distribution and to minimise their impact on our beautiful countryside, communities and infrastructure.

To facilitate that, councillors need to stand up and resist when Planning Inspectors (PI) ride roughshod over their decisions, because HDC is behind the five-year land supply.

We keep reading that the problem of low house building rates is not caused by the Local Authority (LA) but by the Planning Minister, in which case HDC must make their point robustly when completing their Local Plan.

The Plan should include a statement emphasising that, whilst HDC can identify site capacity to match population growth, an inadequate rate of building is due to economic factors and not the LA.

What we don’t need is councillors who accept unrealistic housing targets passively, thereby allowing the PI to continue to over-rule their judgement.

Maybe we can hear something from Mr Dawe about what he is doing to confront the issue and to get the PI to engage properly with the real world.

P.H. DEARSLEY

Northlands Road, Warnham