Goddard Avenue open space and the City Plan

John Fareham and John Abbott report that the City Council have approved the revised Local Plan including reclassification of the open land behind Goddard Avenue as no longer protected greenspace.

The ruling group’s stated position on this matter was that, given sanctions imposed on other councils for not revising their local plans quickly enough, we could wait no longer in revising ours.  We tabled an amendment to the motion passing the Local Plan and argued that it was insufficient to rely on the wisdom and goodwill of Planning Committee to protect our scarce open greenspace, that the consultation process on the draft had left out asking Area Committees, and it was simply wrong to suggest that all manner of evil would befall us if we took another month to get it right. We would like to thank the Liberal Democrats for supporting our amendment; as agreed in advance, we would have supported theirs as well if Labour had not had it ruled out on the specious grounds that their amendment was effectively the same as ours. (It wasn’t.) The argument about whether this was correct came close to getting out of control; it says much about the amount of screaming and shouting that ensued that for once we wouldn’t recommend trying to watch the meeting webcast!