PROTESTERS fighting against plans to site 600 new homes at Webheath and a further 2,800 homes at land behind Foxlydiate Lane have vowed to carry on the struggle after raising the issue at Redditch full council on Monday night.
In an interim report earlier this month the inspector, Simon Hetherington, described ‘a potentially serious flaw in the methodology’ in the council’s local plan outlining the proposed developments.
Mr Hetherington suggested this should be revisited, and that two sites, the one at Webheath the other along the A435 by Studley, be looked at in more detail to ensure they were assessed on a comparative basis to other options and ‘undertaken in a manner that does not seek to justify any particular outcome’.
Campaigners asked council leader Councillor Bill Hartnett for his views on the inspector’s concerns and asked if there were any public grants available to help residents pay for advice on planning documents.
However to the disappointment of campaigners, who filled the public gallery, Coun Hartnett answered only to say that the council’s next steps would be to consider how to take the plan forward in light of the concerns raised.
He also said no grants were available from the local authority but that an organisation, Planning Aid, might be of help.
After the meeting David Rose, chairman of the Webheath Action Group, said: “We just want a fair appraisal.
“It should be about sustainability, the best place that’s not going to harm the environment, instead we feel from the beginning it was assumed Webheath would be built on.”
WAG now intends to write to the local government standards committee and will be putting in Freedom of Information requests for the minutes of Mr Hetherington’s hearing and the amount spent by the council on outside assistance from lawyers and barristers to deal with it.
