A timetable has been set for the Cheshire East Local Plan Examination that takes into account the forthcoming local and national elections and means that the examination will not resume until the end of the summer.
The Council now has until the end of July to submit additional evidence.
The new timetable allows the Council to hold engagement sessions after the elections as staging these during the pre-election period is problematic because of the restrictions that apply to public bodies.
During the pre-election period, local authorities are barred from organising meetings at which candidates may make political statements.
A letter from the Planning Inspectorate said that the inspector leading the examination "fully understands the difficulties that the Council may have in convening engagement meetings with neighbouring authorities (and others) during the forthcoming election period".
Caroline Simpson, executive director of economic growth and prosperity, said: "We welcome the agreed timetable because it avoids conflict with the busy election period.
"We look forward to submitting our revised evidence base in July and resuming the examination at the end of the summer."
The examination of the Local Plan was paused in October so the Council can make some modifications following the Planning Inspector's interim report which outlined "serious shortcomings" which need to be addressed before the Local Plan examination can continue.
Comments
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CEC Cllrs are stalling, because their beliefs are not backed up by facts.
North Cheshire cannot be argued as needing 5,000 more dwellings based on North Cheshire needs, but only to house commuters into Greater Manchester, Stockport and Trafford boroughs.
Unless these boroughs have made it totally clear to us all that their demand for housing outstrips their land capacity and national government ratify this, then there is no case for any more than indicated in the CEC Strategic Housing Assessment (2013 I think) of 23 per annum for both Wilmslow and Handforth combined.
And to think that Wilmslow CEC councillors voted in favour of the plan, beggars belief. It's a mess and it's frankly amazing that they didn't resign or at the very least stand down at the forthcoming election. Are we being fairly represented by them? Answers on your voting slip.......
The first part of the process therefore must be.... LISTENING... and not ignoring 'vox populus'.... as would appear to have occurred previously.. also... make sure no one in charge from CEC is asleep on their watch again wasting more tax payers money...
http://bit.ly/1DlRiwX
Hopefully the people of Wilmslow (who have a track record of seeing the sense of Independent representation, when they kicked Hamilton out) will continue this trend and increase the number of non-party Cllrs both on WTC and CEC.