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* * * News for 25th June 2002 * * *

Horsted and Warren Wood: 25th June 2002

aeroplaneLocal Plan Inspector's Report response goes before Cabinet

The Local Plan Public Inquiry Inspector's Report has gone before Medway's Cabinet.

Medway Council is required to respond to every one of the more than 400 matters raised in the Inspector's report, and the first stage of this process to appear within the Council's political arena was the Cabinet's consideration of a report by Council officers that addresses this requirement. From this they were able to make recommendations to forward to the Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee from whence the resulting recommendations will be put before the full Council.

Most of the recommendations simply agreed with the Inspector's findings, which is unsurprising, but there were a number of differences in respect of various issues. All but one of these were itemised in Appendix 2 to the report that went before today's meeting, and the other—Rochester Airfield (sic)—was covered in nineteen pages of detail in Appendix 1. Note that this issue is so significant that not only did it have its own appendix, it also came ahead of everything else...

Despite the report's proposal that the Council should go for the partial development option put forward by the Inspector, the Cabinet stuck to their guns and decided to recommend a no-development future for the airport site, as the Conservative group has consistently done ever since the issue first arose some four years ago.

Update: 18th July 2002

The Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee considered the recommendations at their meeting on 18th July 2002 and, although allowing the removal of the Copperfield Open Space and Wildlife Habitat (known in the Plan as "land rear of Compass Close and The Tideway"), once again the Labour and Liberal Democrat members voted to reject the other proposals including (surprise, surprise!) the removal of Rochester Airfield from the Plan, specifically Policy S11 and all references to built development on the airfield site.

One of their number clearly stated that "if it is a question of 3,500 objections or a threat to another site from central government, I know which way I shall vote." In other words, Prescott and co. mean more to that Councillor than the wishes of his own electorate.

Representatives from the local residents' action group Action on Davis Estate (ADE) and other interested parties were in the public area at both these meetings and witnessed all that was said and voted.