Summary of the 8th Jan Parish Council Planning Committee meeting

The Parish Council Planning Committee meeting went pretty much as expected last night. The room was full (admittedly it was not a very large room), so my thanks to everyone who gave up their time to attend. As I said in advance I thought there would be minimal, if any, public input allowed, but in fact they permitted the public to raise any points the committee had not discussed and did allow interjections from the public observers many times later too. they considered the two outline planning applications for houses at Reading Road and High Ridge Farm (access via Brown Croft).

I raised every point I knew about on the Reading Road application and other people added some additional items. The discussion of the High Ridge Farm application was less substantial because the only thing on that application not being reserved for a future date (and therefore to be argued in a follow-up application) was the access. The Planning Committee allowed input from the public on this also. Someone from Brown Croft (I’m sorry I did not get their name as they were some rows behind me and left before I did) made a very solid case for Brown Croft being unsuitable as an access road to anywhere! It is narrow, has unsighted curves and it seems that when it’s icy nothing can get in or out with people parking their cars on Great Sheldon’s Road.

So the Parish Council voted to object to both applications primarily on the grounds that they were not in line with the Hart Interim Housing Strategy (for “550 houses at NE Hook plus 50 elsewhere in Hook”) and outside the boundary set in the prior Local Plan. They also accepted all detailed objections raised during the meeting and voted to include these in their objections to each application. Hook Parish Council have no decision making role on planning matters, they are just an official consultee, so we now wait for the Hart view on these two applications and the further appeals or follow-up applications on them.