Hot on the heels of Tandridge's Core Strategy, which will help to prevent inappropriate development in both local communities and on Green Belt land Conservatives in the House of Lords have defeated the Government on their Planning Bill to give more protection to local communities.
The law will now strengthen the powers of local councils to protect urban green space and gardens, and restricts the power of the Government to interfere in councils which want to protect the character of their neighbourhoods. Gardens will again be classed as green space (rather than brownfield land).
It is very pleasing that Conservatives in Parliament used one of the few opportunities to defeat the government to reaffirm their commitment to local decisions by local people.
Tuesday 18 November 2008
Monday 10 November 2008
Credit Crunched
Is how I feel at the moment and is my excuse for not having blogged recently.
Work is exceptionally busy (and has been for the past year) and trying to juggle that with a family and being a councillor is not at all easy and recently been a bit too much. I have made all my meetings, am following up my casework, though am probably slower than I would otherwise be at getting back to people. However I have not had time to blog.
And unfortunately I haven't really now. The key things locally to note are
1 - We (TDC) have approved and implemented the Core Strategy
2- We (TDC) have listened to residents and not put in place any interim policy for handling applications for gypsy or traveller pitches until the outcome of allocation of sites between council areas is known.
3 - There have been a number of acts of mindless vandalism in Oxted South. The Police are investigating but please let them know if you see anything (or have seen anything) that concerns you.
4 - Times are now hard for the Council as well as for everyone else. The cut in interest rates and our appalling government grant settlement (a cash increase of 0.5% per year or MINUS 6.5% after the effects of inflation) means that we are in for a tough budgeting round this year.
I will not promise to be posting regularly for some time yet, but will try to do at least one post per week.
Work is exceptionally busy (and has been for the past year) and trying to juggle that with a family and being a councillor is not at all easy and recently been a bit too much. I have made all my meetings, am following up my casework, though am probably slower than I would otherwise be at getting back to people. However I have not had time to blog.
And unfortunately I haven't really now. The key things locally to note are
1 - We (TDC) have approved and implemented the Core Strategy
2- We (TDC) have listened to residents and not put in place any interim policy for handling applications for gypsy or traveller pitches until the outcome of allocation of sites between council areas is known.
3 - There have been a number of acts of mindless vandalism in Oxted South. The Police are investigating but please let them know if you see anything (or have seen anything) that concerns you.
4 - Times are now hard for the Council as well as for everyone else. The cut in interest rates and our appalling government grant settlement (a cash increase of 0.5% per year or MINUS 6.5% after the effects of inflation) means that we are in for a tough budgeting round this year.
I will not promise to be posting regularly for some time yet, but will try to do at least one post per week.
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