Last month, I sounded the alarm on the Labour and Liberal Democrat plan to miss the deadline set in the North Herts Local Plan to review it and make sure it is up to date.

In fact, despite having agreed to a review by the end of 2023 when they adopted the Local Plan, they are now saying they won't even make a decision on whether to review it all until 2024. 

Now, you may be wondering why this matters.

Well, there are a number of reasons. Firstly, a Local Plan is a binding contract between local residents and their Council. The policies in it govern the future growth of our area. They also set out the protections that residents can expect their Councillors to uphold. 

That North Herts Council is set to breach such an important policy, designed to ensure that the Local Plan is still in tune with the wishes of local people, is a clear violation of that contract between themselves and us as their constituents. 

It also matters because in some cases the strategic development sites set out in the Local Plan no longer carry popular support.

I know that residents across our constituency are deeply concerned about some of the development that the Council wants to see on our local green spaces. 

A Local Plan Review, as much as it does anything else, allows the Council to think again about some of these big strategic development sites – and consider other options on how to deliver some of the housing that local people need. I would like to see the Review work harder, for example, to unlock some of the run-down brownfield sites in our towns which could be sustainable locations for future housing. 

Those are all reasons to review the Local Plan that you might have come across before, but what fewer residents might be aware of is that there is another – really quite critical – reason to review the Local Plan.

When they passed the Plan last year, Labour and the Lib Dems took a vast area in Wymondley, St. Ippolyts and Langley out of the greenbelt. They called this "safeguarded land" designed to help them meet future development needs, and the Local Plan Review could see it allocated for over 3,000 houses on the edge of Stevenage. 

Now, that really matters, because when that site was taken out of the greenbelt it started the clock for any opportunistic developers looking at our area.

Without any firm development policies, but with the area no longer in the greenbelt, it represents a prime site for developers hungry to eat up our green spaces. 

The Local Plan Review might choose to allocate that land for development or it might choose to restore its protections. But either way the Review is needed to ensure that it is local residents – and not developers – who decide what the future of that land looks like. By delaying and delaying, Labour and the Lib Dems are sending a clear message that they want developers – and not local people – to decide.

We can only ask ourselves whether that's because they don't want to show the courage of leadership to take a position on any local developments themselves. 

But of course, there's a real reason why that matters. Because under Labour and the Liberal Democrats, North Herts has moved to a four year cycle of elections from May 2024.

That means that if they can hold off on having to take a stance on anything controversial, if they can delay and delay and delay any decisions that you might not like, if they can just keep control of the Council at those elections, then they have a blank cheque of four years without you being able to cast a single vote in judgement on their performance.

They have four years where they can push through absolutely anything, include their updated Local Plan – whether you agree with it or not – with no chance for you to make your views known at the ballot box. 

Making these decisions is the Council's main constitutional responsibility. To delay the Local Plan Review denies you the transparency on their plans for local development that you need to decide on whether that is what you want in May.  

And even more galling – given that nearly 15% of their Councillors ran for Parliament in 2019 and we've already seen some of their senior Councillors making their Parliamentary ambitions clear – if they continue to delay making decisions themselves on the future of local development, then those ambitious Councillors who want to seek further office might be able to do so without having to be held accountable for making the tough decisions you have elected them to those offices they currently hold to make. 

Delay is not good enough, join me in calling on Labour and the Liberal Democrats to do their job and review the Local Plan at www.bimafolami.co.uk/local-plan.  

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