Sir – Cherwell District has published the modifications to its Local Plan for consultation (closing date October 3).

These modifications are the result of a planning inspector ordering Cherwell to re-base its plan using the much higher housing numbers in the controversial Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). He did this despite there having been no previous consultation on these numbers.

 

I cannot see how he can continue to conduct an impartial examination when he appears already to have pre-determined a crucial foundation of the plan without consultation.

 

In addition to this, however, the fairness and openness of the current consultation must be in serious doubt. Because of the inspector’s direction, those wishing to question the SHMA numbers may well be deterred from doing so. They may believe that the use of the SHMA has already been decided and is not open to discussion. The process is therefore fatally flawed.

 

An explicit, open and impartial consultation process and examination into the SHMA should be conducted as a matter of priority. The SHMA has been much criticised not least by council leaders and MPs. However there has still been no serious challenge to it.

 

Will the leaders and lead members in the local councils please wake up and demand an examination of the SHMA before it is too late and Oxfordshire is set on a course of massive development. Or will they at least explain why they will not?

 

Alan Lodwick, Kidlington