Local Conservative councillors and Green Belt campaigners have criticised confirmation that a future Labour Government would reintroduce regional housing targets. The Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) were a spectacular bureaucratic failure representing an affront to local democracy yet also proving ineffective in getting houses built – house building fell to the lowest level since 1924. The South West RSS proposed 32,800
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Government Ministers have agreed to implement demands put forward by Conservative councillors. Back in the summer 2009, South Gloucestershire Council’s Conservative Cabinet used the Sustainable Communities Act to call on the previous government to scrap the Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) and its 32,800 housing target for the district, as well as for small business rate relief to be paid automatically.
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Conservative councillors on South Gloucestershire Council have welcomed the pledge by the new Coalition government to ‘rapidly’ scrap the previous Labour Government’s controversial Regional Spatial Strategies. The pledge was contained in the Coalition’s ‘Our Programme for Government’ document published on Thursday 20th May. The South West Regional Spatial Strategy (SWRSS) had proposed huge new urban extensions in order to accommodate
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Prospective Conservative MP for Kingswood, Chris Skidmore, with local councillors John Calway and Christine Price have launched a petition to stop inappropriate development on Green Belt Land in Longwell Green. Developers are looking to build hundreds of houses on Green Belt land behind Pearsall Road and Williams Close. This is thanks to the Government’s Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) which looks
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Mangotsfield councillors and residents have handed hundreds of petition signatures to the Leader of South Gloucestershire Council in defence of the local Green Belt. The petitions are in response to a planning application for 180 new houses on Green Belt land at Cossham Street in Mangotsfield. The developers – Taylor Wimpey UK – have submitted the plans on the back
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Proposals to help small businesses and defend the district against over-development are to be put in front of Ministers. In the summer, Conservative councillors drew up proposals that would see the government pay small business rate relief automatically and abolish regional planning, including the controversial Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) document that calls for 32,800 new houses to be built in
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Calls by South Gloucestershire’s Conservative councillors to scrap the region’s controversial planning blueprint have won the backing of a senior Conservative MP. Grant Shapps MP, the Shadow Minister for Housing, promised the district that a future Conservative government would scrap Labour’s Regional Spatial Strategy, as he visited the area this week to meet local Green Belt campaigners. His pledge comes
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South Gloucestershire Council’s Conservative planning chief has accused the Labour government of contradicting itself, following its admission of shortcomings in the way it has prepared its controversial planning blueprint for the region. The Government has confirmed plans to carry out a new ‘Sustainability Appraisal’ after admitting flaws in how it has drawn up its latest draft of the Regional Spatial
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South Gloucestershire Council’s planning chief has criticised the government for claiming that its controversial planning blueprint should be implemented, despite the document being in ‘legal limbo’. The Council has been told by the Government that: “The RSS [Regional Spatial Strategy] has reached such an advanced stage that we [the Government] would expect it now to be given considerable weight in
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