Northumberland County Council’s Core Strategy which documents how the county will develop over the next 15 years moved to the next stage. The Council agreed to send the Core Strategy to the Government’s Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for examination. The Inspector will then decide whether the plan is sound.
As you know the implications for Hexham West are significant with 600 dwellings potentially planned for the land running from Shaws Park to the Allendale Road.
Independent County Councillor for Hexham West Derek Kennedy made a powerful speech at the Council meeting on 22 February 2017, Derek said “Over 5 years ago I helped residents in setting up the Protect Hexham’s Green Belt group. The group has campaigned long and hard to highlight that the 600 dwellings is not the right development for the Town. The road infrastructure and the Town itself will be swamped and be unable to cope with the extra pressures of people and cars. There are other places to build within Hexham before going to the Green Belt. This is a developers charter and we suspect this will be 600 high-value executive homes and turn into a commuter belt for Newcastle. The developers and landowners will make rich profits with the Town gaining nothing other than added pressures. The local resident and I have campaigned, gathered signatures for petitions, written objections, met with planning officers but all of this effort has been ignored. Our only hope now is for the Inspector to consider this as an overdevelopment. We do need small scale developments with affordable housing for local people but this has to be in the centre of town not in the green belt.”
Unfortunately, Councillor Derek Kennedy’s final pleas were not supported and the Council agreed for the Core Strategy document including Hexham’s green belt deletion to go to Government for inspection. Derek said “We are now in the hands of national government and its inspector. But we are aware that the Government keeps calling for 100,000’s of homes to be built across the UK, with some press reports claiming 1 million homes in the next 3 years! We await the verdict which is expected later in 2017. I will of course keep you up to date of developments.”
Callum Moody of Allendale Road, Hexham is conducting his dissertation for university and interviewed Councillor Derek Kennedy on the green belt implications for Hexham and how the campaign has been conducted for the many years. Derek said “It was really interesting to explain to Callum all the activities that the campaigners have gone through including all the meetings with planners etc. I wish Callum well with his study on this subject.”