Agenda item

This report seeks approval for an approach to facilitating the delivery of the West Bank strategic allocation in the Local Plan.

The Chair invited the Director of Place to present his report. The Director of Place explained that the West Bank strategic allocation in the Local Plan, which counted for 1,000 of the 20,000 homes identified as needed, had not yet been delivered for various reasons including the complexity of the site in relation to the level of infrastructure provision and its general viability. The Director of Place confirmed that this report then explored the opportunity to facilitate this development by breaking it down into a series of smaller phases which worked both independently and also collectively, which would be a complex piece of work looking in particular at viability and phases not being unduly loaded up with infrastructure requirements to the detriment of their delivery. He explained that the report was asking the Committee to agree to commission a Supplementary Planning Document which would set out all of these details to help deliver this site. He confirmed that to provide a holistic picture fringe areas (river bank works upriver, flood defences at Climping) outside of the strategic allocation, which therefore could not be part of the Supplementary Planning Document, be looked at and could become individual policy statements. The Director of Place added an additional recommendation [4] to those listed in the report in light of the clarification of the Committee’s Terms of Reference in Minute TBC, which was further amended after Member input.

The Chair thanked the Director of Place for his report and then raised his doubts over the viability of the site and what had originally been proposed in the Local Plan but, recognising that both additional homes were needed and that the flooding at Climping had changed the circumstances, considered it right to progress this study to see what alternatives could be found.

The Chair then invited questions and comments from Members which included issues around the diversity of land ownership, the risk of flooding and whether the development would provide sufficient resources to improve the pre-existing flood defences, concerns about the poor quality of the soil on site and whether a smaller allocation could mitigate this, de-allocating this site altogether, there being no alternative suggestion of where this housing might go if de-allocation was pursued, whether the development could be run as a competition for national house builders who would then fund all infrastructure work, concerns over the costs involved and changes to the proposals for the site over the years.

The Director of Place provided answers to the queries raised, confirming that the site could still make a profit (to be determined in further viability studies) but that there was a risk that the development might not come forward in its entirety, and reminding Members that the Council did not currently have a five year housing supply and that de-allocating the site would make worse.

The recommendations were then proposed and seconded.

The Committee

RESOLVED that

1)    The Council commissions a detailed masterplan for the West Bank strategic allocation including indicative phasing and a comprehensive viability appraisal

2)    The Council commissions as complementary guidance a detailed policy statement for areas adjoining the allocation to the south including along the riverside and towards Clymping Beach

3)    The Council establishes an Officer Working Group with representatives of key landowners and the relevant parish councils to take forward the project and hold wider consultative discussions with the wider community and stakeholders

4)    the Director of Place in consultation with the chairman of the Planning Policy Committee be authorised to agree the Heads of terms for the commission referred to in (1) and (2) and procure the said commission

The Committee

RECOMMEND TO THE CORPORATE POLICY AND PERFORMANCE COMMITTEE that

5)    Should any application for funding for this project submitted to the UK Community Renewal Fund be unsuccessful, then a supplementary budget of up to £100,000 to fund the cost of (1) & (2) above be agreed as the Council’s contribution to the cost of the project; This equates to a Council tax equivalent of £1.60 for a typical Band D property

6)    The Council accept financial contributions from third parties to support the delivery of (1) and (2) above.