Councillor Margaret Cooksey, Cabinet Member for Planning, said: “The government’s formal response* concerning proposed changes to the current planning system was published on 16 December 2020 and, while not all our objections to the way housing targets are currently calculated have been addressed, we are at least satisfied that the existing methodology used to calculate the number of homes as set out in the first stage draft Local Plan consultation held earlier this year remains unchanged.
“We had already more than doubled the number of houses set to be provided each year in Mole Valley from 188 at the time of the draft Local Plan’s inception, up to 453 to bring it in line with the government’s existing requirements. Had the government’s most recent proposal been agreed, that target would have jumped by more than a 100 homes per year to 563. Not only would this increase have put even greater strain on us as an authority to allocate land for future development, but the change would have set us back greatly in terms of the length of time it would have taken to prepare Mole Valley’s Local Plan.