1st November 2007

Another letter challenging David Drew and Parmjit Dhandas call-in of Hunts Grove.

Dear Editor,

Can I first congratulate your journalist on her intelligent and challenging questions that she posed to the District Council Officers and Councillors, at a recent meeting for the media on Hunts Grove. This was followed up by your full and measured editorial in lasts weeks’ “Gazette”.

I think that only David Drew and Parmjit Dhanda will fully know why they have left this challenge to happen, so late in the planning process which, if they succeed will have the most damaging effect on all our District. As Councillor Dennis Andrewartha so aptly put it, David had 10 years to raise concerns on the issue of Hunts Grove at every level and failed todo so. Such was his commitment in opposing the scheme that he couldn’t even find the time to appear, to give evidence at the year long Public Inquiry in Stroud!

Most of your readership will well remember that the District Council went through a lengthy process of consultations when there were 150 sites to consider. The Council of course is geographically constrained by the Area of Outstanding Beauty and the floodplain . The 1750 at Hunts Grove, which is not on the floodplain. This allocation complies with the South West Structure Plan.  This Plan directs large developments to existing larger regional conurbations, ie. Gloucester, which in a travel sense is much more sustainable.

It is further worth remembering that the local plan was approved by all of the Councillors on the District, including the nine members from David’s own Party. What Mr Drew is refusing to acknowledge however is that already and outside the Hunts Grove allocation there is a great deal of proposed dispersal around the District, to the year 2011.

I just hope that at the new Inquiry, which starts in late January we will frequently see our illustrious MP performing, so he can be challenged in the chamber on his planning knowledge, produced by his own Government? Outside that non-planning arena he may well be asked, why he was prepared to sacrifice most of the District to gain a few hundred extra votes in Hardwick in an election that never was!

John Marjoram, Stroud District Councillor