URGENT - Email to be sent to Chiltern District Council before November 7th Planning Meeting

Dear Supporter,

We need your URGENT assistance as we need people to quickly email the Head of Chiltern Council:

Isobel Darby - idarby@chiltern.gov.uk

THIS NEEDS TO SENT BEFORE THE COUNCIL MEETS ON TUESDAY EVENING, 7th NOVEMBER

As predicted at our BNG Open Meeting with Cheryl Gillan MP just three weeks ago, Chiltern & South Bucks Joint Council Planning Committee, is due to meet to consider the Green Belt options recommendations from the planning officer this coming Tuesday  at 6.30 pm. 

In respect of our site in Lye Green, to the North-East of Chesham, the recommendation by the Chiltern Planning Officers for Lye Green is that the whole site is removed from Green Belt designation & “safeguarded” for future development!   

This is an appalling suggestion given only 26ha (43%) of the whole 60ha site is regarded as develop-able. Continued Green Belt designation will safeguard it perfectly well as it has done for many decades.

Most importantly, the site is at an unsustainable location being too far from public transport and places to shop/work and is inappropriate for "safeguarding". 

The recommendation flies in the face of the site's scoring within the Council's own Evidence Base and their Green Belt assessment and therefore the recommendation is contrary to guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework and the recent Housing White Paper. 

It will also expose the hypocrisy of the Council’s boasts to always strive for “sustainable development” in the area and it will probably undermine the excellent work currently being done by Chesham CIC Renaissance too.

Given the fact that the main landowner does not want to sell the whole site either, the whole site is clearly not deliverable and the officer's recommendation makes no sense and offers a dreadful option of uncertainty in planning terms over the next 20 years.    
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Please send an immediate email to Isobel Darby copying in all other other Chiltern Councillors (click here for the full mailing list) reciting the above and any other issues you wish to raise in the hope we can get the elected Councillors to reject this lamentable recommendation being made by an unelected planning officer! 
Thank you. 

The BNG team