Planning, Housing Delivery and Infrastructure Following publication of the White Paper, “Fixing our Broken Housing Market”, Babergh has reviewed some of its own issues. It’s well known that most of the rural housing numbers proposed in the current Local Plan (60% urban, 40% rural) have already been given permissions, (not that these numbers are the […]

Judicial Review (JR) CO/2375/2016 Councillors recently had a briefing on the outcomes and potential impact of the JR relating to East Bergholt Parish Council’s claim against Babergh DC and the planning permission given with respect to 10 single-storey dwellings for the over-55’s on a site off Hadleigh Road between two listed buildings – Gatton House […]

Change of Governance – adopting a Cabinet-Leader model At a meeting of the Council on 20th December 2016, a majority of councillors voted to change from a committee system to an “Executive” model of governance. Whilst opposition Members have concerns about this change, the Administration believes that it will mean greater levels of openness, transparency […]

Council finances – future Budget situation Funding arrangements for Councils have changed significantly with the Government’s Revenue Support Grant decreasing from £992k in 2016/17 to an estimated £504k in 2017/18, a 49% reduction, with a further reduction to £204k in 2018/19, followed by a tariff payable to central government of £131k in 2019/20.  In other […]

New Chief Executive appointment I was pleased to be a member of the panel involved in the recruitment and selection of the new Babergh-Mid Suffolk CEO.  It was a rigorous selection process, involving a nationwide recruitment exercise, handled initially by Gatenby Sanderson, specialist consultants in this level of appointment. During the final two assessment days, […]

There have been concerns for some time about the availability of careers advice to young people in our schools.  Whilst education is not normally part of a District council’s brief, Babergh and Mid Suffolk are keen to assist in this situation.  The Navigator project is the result of joint working by Connect Education and Business […]

Capel St Mary is waiting for two significant planning applications to land on the desk.  There are concerns over both, not because people object to new homes – people need them – but rather because of the access, noise and traffic problems they seem destined to cause, with detriment to residential amenity and road safety.  […]

A voluntary Electoral Review Babergh has requested a review to be carried out alongside a compulsory review for Mid Suffolk.  Some council wards now have more electors than average, whilst some have fewer, usually because of housing developments over time. This means that votes don’t carry equal weight across the District, so occasionally the ward […]

New joint Chief Executive for Babergh and Mid Suffolk I am pleased to be one of the group leaders who will be part of the process to recruit a new chief executive, as I was for the appointment of Charlie Adan some six years ago.  At that point the two Districts were still to hold […]

New Joint Local Planning framework: Local Development Scheme (LDS) The council has to prepare (yet another) Local Plan, with a publicly available program and timetable of the planning documents they intend to prepare. This LDS will replace all LDS/Local Plan programmes previously produced, and be supplemented or updated with real-time progress information. During the summer […]