Tipner West super-peninsula: Portsmouth City Council's super-peninsula plan will see crunch meeting held to decide its future

Council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson said the move would ensure the council reaches an agreement on how it prioritises sites for the development of new homes, including the Lennox Point peninsula plan.

‘It needs the support of all councillors,’ he said. ‘People have changed their minds several times and that's cost us a lot of money.

‘Having this meeting will give everyone a chance to have their say and for the council to come to a consensus on what it wants to do.’

But opposition councillors have criticised the Lib Dem administration for ‘suddenly rushing’ the matter ‘after months of dither and delay’.

‘We are two years late in submitting a local plan and the blame for that rests solely at the feet of Cllr Vernon-Jackson and his administration,’ Conservative group leader Simon Bosher said.

‘The original suggestion was that this meeting would take place in March but it’s been put off again and again. And now they've decided to suddenly rush it through, inconveniencing councillors at an extra meeting in August.’

The council is required to publish a local plan in order to set out how it will reach the target to build 17,700 homes in the city, set by the government.

Councillors of all parties have raised concerns about the feasibility of reaching this and requested the council ask for a reduction. Similar comments were made by Portsmouth North MP Penny Mordaunt earlier this year who urged it to meet with chief planner Joanna Averley to ‘clarify its confusion’.

It is understood the revised document being drawn up by the council will now only set out proposals to build 14,500 homes due to the opposition to a £1bn land reclamation scheme at Tipner West.

A version based on the City Deal proposals originally drawn up several years ago is instead expected to be included.

But Cal Corkery, the leader of the Labour group, has repeated his call for the council to rule out the larger scheme, which has drawn strong opposition from environmental groups, including the RSPB and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, entirely. Previously Cllr Vernon-Jackson has described the scheme as ‘dead in the water’ because of opposition, but it has not been officially dropped.

‘It’s time for Gerald Vernon-Jackson and the cabinet he leads to show some leadership and formally abandon their plans for the environmentally-destructive Tipner West super peninsula on which they've already wasted £18m of taxpayer cash,’ he said.

‘Labour councillors have been campaigning for a smaller-scale development which doesn't concrete over protected environments and delivers the genuinely affordable council housing local people need.’

Despite the decision to call the extra meeting to speed up progress on finalising the local plan, another delay to its proposed timetable has also been confirmed.

Earlier this year the predicted date for submitting a draft document was pushed back to spring 2023.

However, a revision to the Local Development Scheme, which every local authority has to publish, due to be considered at next week's cabinet meeting says this is likely to be 'late summer 2023'.

A report by Ian Maguire, the council's assistant director of planning, says there are ‘several reasons’ for the latest delay.

'The work on understanding the current capacity, forecasts for waste management and future policy direction for the plan has been complicated by the plethora of government consultations on waste and other matters such as nature conservation and air quality,' it says.

It adds that Natural England has recently 'provided advice on the potential for nutrient impacts on habitat sites' and that this also needed to be considered by the council when determining where to allow development to take place.

'Furthermore, the current international situation has elevated the political priority of the issues of energy prices and energy security,' it adds. 'Hampshire has both existing oil and gas operations and the potential for new developments of these energy sources, with appropriate policy set out in the current adopted Minerals and Waste Plan.

'However, it is considered prudent to allow time to ensure the plan is reflecting national policy, including on climate change.'