Local Plan must be revised to protect environment

27 July 2022

Green Councillor Martin Hey has called on Calderdale Council to make changes to the Local Plan to protect the environment and help tackle climate change, whilst ensuring it significantly increases the number of affordable homes in the borough.

A revised version of the Local Plan, which envisages building 15,000 new homes across Calderdale, is set to go out to a final six-week consultation at the end of July. About half of the new houses will be built on green belt.

At a Council Cabinet meeting on 11 July, Martin Hey heavily criticised the proposal to go ahead with the plan despite the ‘mountain of evidence that the development will overwhelm infrastructure and services’ in areas affected and ‘cause massive damage to the environment and wildlife.’

He said the plan was based on false projections about the rate of population growth in Calderdale over the next decade — it envisages the population will grow four times faster than in recent years — and this alone should lead to adjustments being made.

‘I know that reopening some of the Plan's fundamental assumptions will be painful but the damage done to the borough, it we don't, will be considerable. The plan should be changed to align it more closely with genuine need.’

After the meeting, he said he was disappointed the Cabinet was not open to making fundamental changes.

‘Whatever the rights and wrongs are of where houses should be built, the lack of commitment to the environment by protecting green space from housebuilding and applying conditions to ensure green houses are built, is striking.
‘I also want to see a binding commitment that at least 30 per cent of the homes planned will be affordable. There are currently indications that this will be the case, but I am sceptical that anywhere near that number will be built once negotiations with developers are completed.’