THE Aylesbury Vale District Council meeting on May 7 marked the final stage in the process that culminated in an all-council vote on the Local Development Framework Core Strategy.

At a stage when one might expect the dust to start to settle on a well-contested campaign, it continues to fly. Why? The answer is straightforward. Despite assurances the process would be run in a fair and democratic way, the recorded vote is plain for all to see.

For: 31 (all Conservative)
Abstentions: 2 (Conservative)
Against: 21 (Liberal Democrat and Independent)

The job of these councillors is to represent their local constituents, so how do those local constituents feel when the best defence of their councillors' actions is that they were so brave in abstaining – they couldn't possibly vote against as that would risk being cast out by the party – the Conservative party whose values are perceived by many to stand for integrity and fair play.

So the vote was clearly whipped – something that is not only warned against in government guidelines on this type of decision but was clearly cautioned against in an eloquent letter from Conservative MP John Bercow.

Setting aside the poor politics, what can be taken from the excellent debate prior to the decision? It was made very clear and confirmed again by the planners that the Eastern Arc is not the best technical solution – that accolade goes to the Southern Arc.

This results from many substantial and costly studies looking carefully at 17 different objectives. The conclusion is that, of all three options, the one chosen – Eastern Arc – performs least well to a significant degree.

So what is it that is so powerful to overcome this position? If one is to strip away the 'Nimby' public opinion and an inconclusive but at best neutral position on viability, it is claimed that building the Eastern Arc in three unconnected blocks poses lesser risk to the strategy than the option to the south of Aylesbury that is apparently reliant on the whole job being completed.

Planning to fail to complete a strategy seems to me a defeatist start point but on further examination this is even worse.

There have been clear and persistent attempts by the developer to the south to demonstrate how this development could also be delivered in three risk-free blocks.
This has been met by the planners by the proverbial sticking of fingers in ears as there is a clear danger that, if this was heard out, the planners' attempt to retro fit the evidence to a decision provided to them by the Conservatives would come unstuck.

So where to from here? In due course an independent government inspector will examine this decision. If this is done in an independent way there is every reason that this decision will be found 'unsound'.

In the meantime we have to make our concerns clear to the inspector, and it's just possible the decision to site 6,000 houses to the east, to spend millions on flood defences and mitigating environmental and ecological damage – and to prioritise all this spend ahead of essential infrastructure – might just have some common sense applied before it is too late.

John Sylvester
Bierton

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