Portsmouth's Local Plan at risk of 'failing', warn Conservative councillors

A council report published last week revealed the timeline for producing the draft strategy, which would cover the period to 2038, had been pushed back to the end of the year after councillors refused to support the new 'super peninsula' at Tipner West.

'The whole point about having a Local Plan is you're supposed to review it every five years, so this whole cycle from start to end should not take more than five years, and it's taken a great deal longer than that already,' councillor Luke Stubbs said at Tuesday's full council meeting.

He said Portsmouth City Council was now 'dangerously close' to not being able to produce a document covering the required 15-year period.

'We can't afford any further delays,' he added. 'And I think we might very well end up in the state where the whole plan fails and we have to start all over again.'

Fellow Conservative, councillor Matt Atkins, said there were still 'fundamental problems' with the plan.

'I'm not sure that we'll be in anything like a position to submit it by the end of the year, unless the Lib Dem administration really takes hold of this by the scruff of the neck and make some difficult decisions,' he said.

But councillor Hugh Mason, the cabinet member for planning policy, said the council was working to finalise the plan 'as soon as possible'.

'The process has taken longer than anticipated, it cannot be denied' he said. 'This delay has been occasioned by two main causes: the first is the uncertainty created by central government, by its changes to planning principles and procedures. The second is that the responses to the consultation [on Tipner West] produced a very problematic result.'

He added: 'This work is taking time but it is essential if we are to have a Local Plan which inspectors will consider to be coherent, robust and deliverable.

'If not we will have to start all over again and that really will be costly.'

He said he could not give a firm date for when the document would be completed because of the need to win councillors' support

Council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson added that it was 'worth taking the time to work through with people what the outcome should be to try to get it right'.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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