Decision details

(1)  Subject to the following amendment to Minute CO23 to delete the 3 bullet points in the pre-amble to be replaced with the undermentioned wording in italics, the minutes of the Extraordinary meeting held on 4 July 2017 were confirmed as a correct record and authorised to be signed by the Mayor.

Councillor Chandler advised the Council:

•    this subject matter had attracted a great deal of interest through consultation period with very strong and conflicting views expressed on almost all aspects.  This had led to the review of the spatial strategy from its key starting point – the 65:35 ratio between Melton Mowbray and the rural areas through to the inclusion of individual villages as service centres and rural hubs.  There is little prospect of satisfying everyone’s aspirations but we remain convinced that the distribution within the last version of the plan was fair and justified and we do not propose a fundamental change in direction.  However there is always room for improvement and it is in all of our interests to develop and improve the plan where we can;

•    the report addresses some of those issue and identifies some key improvements we can make.  It clarifies the balance between Melton and the rural area and our expectations of how the development will take place.  Importantly, it addresses one of the issues that caused the greatest criticism in the last consultation to rework the village allocation so that we can avoid the need of redistribution between villages.  This is possible because the work on sites – item 3E – has brought forward a better range of sites and in turn a closer fit to the approach of allocations it is based upon, allocating based on population size;

•    on a new approach to SS3 unallocated sites: stepping away from prescriptive limits which would be hard to justify and may not stand the test of time.  A new approach is proposed as a focused change which would allow a responsive approach to be taken on 3;

•    a judgement based on need and impact not a tick box approach based on fixed numbers.  Improving the review clauses in SS6 so that they are more precise and inclusive of the options available;

•    the recommendation is to note the differences between the significant focused changes; recommendations parts 2 and 3 are less important modifications where it is proposed we take the opportunity to improve the text of 4, 5 and 6.

(2)  the minutes of the ordinary meeting held on 19 July 2017 were confirmed as a correct record and authorised to be signed by the Mayor.