Next Tuesday Area South of Somerset Councill will consider plans for 400 houses along Canal Way. The planning officer has recommended approval, which is perhaps not surprising as the original plans submitted in 2016 were also approved. The then South Somerset District Council approved the application at its Regulation Committee.
Although it was passed by a narrow margin, work on agreeing a s106 agreement dragged on. The s106 agreement is where the developer agrees to pay towards the public services and infrastructure required to support the development.
With the s106 document still not agreed, the ruling on phosphate mitigation following the Dutch-N case put a spanner in the works. The application could not proceed without appropriate phosphate mitigation. Since when the plans have stalled. Until now.
The plans have been controversial from the start. Originally they included a new school in the development but this has now been dropped. There was a row within the town over whether housing should be permitted along either Canal Way or Shudrick Valley. It now looks increasingly likely that both will be waved through.
The Area South Committee meets on Tuesday 9 January at 2pm in the old SSDC offices at Brympton Way, Yeovil.
If Somerset moved to a catchment-wide phosphate mitigation policy and released all 18,000 held up new homes (incl 4,000 social and affordable homes) then the 5 year housing supply would also be met, allowing local plans to count again and have precedence over speculative and opportunistic planning applications.
We only need from the Council’s own figures 2.3 tonnes of phosphate mitigation every year and Wessex Water have already over the past 5 years removed 60 tonnes of phosphates a year.
This is a policy decision for our new unitary Council, who seem stuck in the rut of policies that are simply Continuity County Council.
Very hard right now to see how this Lib Dem administration is any different to the previous Conservative administration under David Fothergill.
To govern is to choose…..