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Planning for too many houses ?
One of the reasons for members to pay their subscription to the DPA is so that they don't have to wade through the slough of draft planning policies in the knowledge that this will be done on their behalf by the Association.
Be honest ! How many of you bothered to comment on the catchily titled Development Management Delivery Development Plan Document (DPDDMD)? If you did then you will have appreciated how difficult it is to comment on these policies without a thorough understanding of what they are supposed to be replacing and how they relate to other planning documents already published. This means that you would have had about half a dozen documents open on your desk at the same time.
At the same time you would have been thinking about that National Planning Policy Framework that has been so much in the news recently. Just what is meant by a "presumption in favour of sustainable development". It all sounds as though the scales are being a little too heavily weighted in favour of the developer at the expense of the countryside. At the DPA, we support the intensive lobbying that has been carried out by the National Trust and CPRE to try to redress this balance.
At the local level, we have made similar comments on the draft DPDDMD. Many policies from the old Local Plan had been redrafted with a positive "spin". That is, instead of saying "...development will not be permitted unless ..." the new draft policies were 
saying "... development will be permitted provided that ..." It may seem to be nit picking but we felt that in a number of cases this led to a significant weakening of the policy statement. This is particularly important when you understand that, under the national framework, approval for development will be presumed where local policy is either absent or not up to date.
In general terms we also felt that the Authority is aiming to provide development sites over and above the level of local demand that can be expected over the next 20 year period. Once sites are identified and allocated for development it will be extremely difficult to prevent subsequent use. We have advocated a more constrained approach.
Other bite sized comments from our response :
- We have objected to the new policy designed to govern so called "low impact dwellings". Potentially this opens the door to additional development in the open countryside and we do not see why special considerations should be applied to this type of development.
- We have suggested a strengthening and clarification of the policy on telecommunications development in the expectation that this will be of increasing importance with the development of rural broadband.
- We have objected to garden plots been classified as "brown field sites".
- We have welcomed additional clarification in a number of policy areas, not least the way that permitted volume of replacement dwelling is calculated (although this correspondent despairs of the Authority ever applying this policy).
Our full response can be 
seen and downloaded here.
The full consultation document can be seen here if you want to see what you have been missing (or just happen to be short of sleeping pills).
Better still - keep paying the subscription !
