Finally a well done to East Hampshire District Council - at last night's Full Council the Leader Richard Millard made important announcements re the Local Plan. Link here: https://tinyurl.com/RMEHDC and verbatim transcription below.

Summary: Millard is to meet with Gove to discuss the housing numbers; get the South Downs National Park to build their share of houses; (hooray!);  re-do the Draft Local Plan with new studies (and must mean new sites too) and re-consult (repeat Reg 18 stage) in late 2022 and then consult at Reg 19 stage after that - originally due this November.

Each of the two consultations will be on consecutive versions of the Local Plan. Hope this makes sense. Any questions do email saynotochawtonparkfarm@gmail.com. 

Will this mean that Chawton Park Farm will not be in it? We hope so and will keep campaigning! More work for all of us but very good news.

EHDC are also going to focus on a greener and more sustainable approach and produce a Supplementary Planning Document to guard against speculative strikes by developers.

More updates as we know more!

Here is what Millard said verbatim:
“My favourite politician who we all know sitting up at Westminster, Mr Gove, has managed to throw yet another curve ball into the equation, and as such I think, and what I’m going to do as of tomorrow, is request the COO [Simon Jenkins] to suspend going to Regulation 19 and going to request that we return to the beginning of Regulation 18, and we will undertake a full process of consultation again because I as the Leader, (and I think I will get the backing of members in this room), need to ensure that the houses that get built within this district get built in the appropriate locations and as an Authority [that] we have gone out and challenged where they’re being built and the numbers that are being imposed on us.
And quite frankly I’m not happy with the answers that are coming up regarding the South Downs National Park, man up guys because you have to take some houses and we will fight you on it because we have to.
I am not going to have villages and towns potentially having vastly larger numbers if we have other areas where they can go just as well and just as appropriately but unfortunately it’s got a line drawn on the basis of a map. We’re not talking about North & South Korea here we’re talking about East Hampshire, there is no line of demarcation, we need to ensure that if we’re going to challenge it and we challenge it effectively, we have an extremely good team to be able to do this.
It also allows us to ensure that we can continue the process of greening up that we’ve started and we’ve begun the policy. So it’s going to give us the chance to ensure that the sites that do get chosen, and let’s just be absolutely clear ‘houses have to be built’, I don’t think there’s anybody in this room that debates or disagrees with that, [but] the fact is they have got to be built where there’s infrastructure, where the green credentials are correct, and in the right places, and that’s why we need to go back and review the situation.
Government policy is pushing us down this line because policies keep emerging weekly. I want to engage with Mr Gove (can’t wait) to discuss on the levelling up and the housing situation so that will be my recommendation across to Mr Jenkins tomorrow morning. What I expect will happen is that we will begin formal consultation again at the beginning of the process, probably late this year, because it allows us time to be able to go back through the process.
For those concerned, (and the natural question that will come forward is what happens about speculative development) we will be undertaking to provide a Supplementary Document which will provide a mechanism to mitigate planning applications in the interim. I know we can do it, we’ve done it before and we will do it again. So that is going to happen again. So that is quite a key thing.”