MP accuses Harborough District Council of rushing through Local Plan as it announces timescale

Harborough District Council has been working on a new Local Plan – to protect the district from speculative development up to 2041 – after agreeing to take on 1,500 extra homes Leicester cannot accommodate.

The new plan would need to meet a deadline of June 2025.

The situation was made more complex when the new government announced changes to its planning policy, doubling the former government’s five-year minimum housing target to 1.5 million new homes nationally.

The council pushed ahead with its work identifying potential housing sites without seeking further clarity, saying to pause could waste over £1million.

Now it has revealed council members will be briefed on the plan in December, and shown potential housing sites - of which just a fraction will be needed, the leader has said.

Council leader Phil Knowles explained: “The implications of changing track means we will have to identify more sites within the Strategic Housing and Employment Land Availability and then commission more work, meaning we’ll have to change our timescales, increase our budget and inevitably take longer to deliver houses which is not what the government are trying to achieve.

“However, I’m pleased to say the work is progressing well and we have a range of briefings planned before Christmas to take members through the detail bit by bit. We will be looking to fully brief all members on the final plan including proposed housing sites in December.”

Cabinet papers will be published later the same month for a full council meeting in mid-January when Cabinet members hope the plan will be rubber stamped. In this event, the plan will be put to the public for a six-week consultation.

Cllr Knowles added: “The council will be holding drop-in consultation sessions in the main areas affected during the six-week period which will probably include: Market Harborough, Lutterworth Broughton Astley, Scraptoft, Thurnby, Kibworth and Great Glen.”

MP Neil O’Brien said plans for thousands of new homes would have a ‘huge impact on residents’.

He referred to the earlier consultation for taking on extra housing for Leicester, describing it as ‘botched’ since 0.1 per cent of residents attended. Cllr Knowles argued the responses were double that of the consultation for the current Local Plan.

Mr O’Brien added: “Now it has become apparent councillors will be presented with potentially thousands of pages of documentation to make sense of in early January, and then forced to make a final decision days later.

“This is ridiculous. We warned the timescale was being rushed, but even I thought there would be a basic respect for democracy and due process.

“But sadly not. Instead of a proper debate about multiple different options, councillors are going to be presented with just one plan and expected to rubber stamp it.

“This is outrageous. There is a massive democracy deficit here. No wonder residents are so unhappy about the way homes are just dropped on them with no meaningful consultation.”

Cllr Knowles further stressed without a new plan ‘”growth would come to the district in an unplanned way, possibly where the council and community would prefer not to have it and potentially lacking in key supporting infrastructure”.