Fenland District Council is a Planning Disaster

Some of you will have seen this article in the Cambs News, which is also being circulated and commented on in Social Media about a planning application for 249 homes to the east of Whittlesey that has been approved by Fenland District Council.

I commented on a post on Facebook saying this:

I have said it a few times in this election campaign and I will post something on my blog tomorrow. But, in short, the issue is Fenland’s Local Plan which is basically in favour of any development up to 249 homes as long as it is considered sustainable. It is incredibly flawed. Most local plans are used as a framework for where development happens - Fenland’s stands out as something different. One downside of this system is that it is impossible to plan properly for school places doctors, roads etc. - if you don’t know where the development is going how can you plan?

The local plan is old and should have been replaced at least once by now but Fenland have halted the process of replacing it. I can name other councils that have all but completed two local plans since Fenlands was approved."

I said I would post something about this today, so here it is. Apologies if it is a little long - but I want to make this evidence based.

I want to reinforce what I said. The issue we face is that Conservative run Fenland District Council's Local Plan is desperately in need of an update. The current local plan is here. You will see that it dates back to 2014. The main issue is that it describes anything over 250 homes as large scale (see the policy LP4 on page 18/19), which basically means that anything under 250 homes is small/medium scale and therefore non-strategic. In most local plans these are called "windfall sites" and are usually limited to, at the most, 50 homes but my experience is almost always 25 or less. They weren't described as windfall sites in the local plan, but the Planning Inspectorate who effectively gave the Government sign-off to the plan, are clear that this is what they were:

DABs that previously curtailed windfall development are no longer applicable. Large scale windfalls (up to 249 dwellings) can therefore come forward in and around the towns.

The letter that contains this quote can be found here. The fact that windfalls form such an important part of the plan are reinforced by the fact the letter contains the word 16 times. This basically means that any development of 249 homes or less has a presumption in favour as long as they are deemed sustainable.

To a certain extent that would be OK, except that the expectation was always that the plan would be renewed in five years or so - but it hasn't. Most councils work on this sort of cycle to renew their local plans. I can give you two examples in Cambridgeshire; the first is Greater Cambridge (which comprises Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire) who are going through a review of their local plan now (despite some huge issues), their previous local plan was passed in 2018. Similarly, Huntingdonshire are due to consult on their latest local plan in the next few months after agreeing their previous one in 2019. I want to reinforce this point - these councils published their most recent local plan 4/5 years after Fenland's last one and will publish their next one well before Fenland. The position of Fenland District Council in this regard is utterly, utterly negligent and is doing harm to you and I.

It is not surprising, but Fenland's website is utterly confusing on this issue. I went to the Home Page and searched for "Local Plan" and found this page which shows they started a new local plan 2019, but the timetable was updated at least three times after that (the timetable is in a document called the Local Development Scheme), with the final one published in March 2025 showing a proposed completion of of 2028. However, this is clearly not current either because informal/focussed discussions were supposed to have finished last month; Fenland started a new local plan in 2019 have updated the timetable (i.e. delayed it) at least three times since, with the most recent deadline having been missed and with no current update on where they are.

For clarity, my understanding is (and this is based on unofficial feedback) that they have decided to halt the local plan because they cannot afford to resource it due to the effort going into the proposed Local Government Reorganisation. If true they need to be asked how Huntingdonshire and Greater Cambridge are able to move forward with their local plans (and communicate them much better) when they too are subject to the proposed Local Government Reorganisation. I'll give you the reason - it's because the councils involved are much better run councils.

I am sure that the Conservatives (who run the council) are likely to panic when the read this (like they did when I exposed that we were going to move up to four bins), and one response may be to start spraying blame all over the place, especially given that there is a by-election taking place next week. Don't buy it - they are the ones that have been utterly negligent in providing an up-to-date local plan, they are the ones that have been so poor at communicating what they are doing and they are the ones that have left Whittlesey, and the whole of Fenland with an inability to properly plan for new development.