The Planning Authority for our area is Brentwood Council where all decisions are made as to whether to grant or refuse an application. It is also the borough council that oversees building regulations, enforces action against breeches of the rules, and draws up far-reaching proposals such as its Local Development Plan with is stated intention to build thousands of dwellings on Green Belt land, including two large housing estates sites at Blackmore.
The Parish Council’s Planning Committee should be notified of every building application lodged with Brentwood so that it can comment on the merits or otherwise of the plan from a local community prospective. Although it is an official consultee, the parish’s recommendations or opinions do not have to be acted upon by the borough (and often are not). Our present Chairman of Planning, Cllr. Terry Lockhart, brings extensive knowledge of national planning guidelines to the role and so reports submitted to Brentwood are always referenced within the appropriate legislation making them entirely relevant rather than simply subjective.
Our Planning Committee adjusts its scheduling of meetings in order to ensure it can make timely responses for each application under consideration by Brentwood Council.
As an aid to transparency, the Parish Council has an interactive map Search the Map which may also be found from the home page menu. Clicking the red marker pin should activate a direct link to documents held by Brentwood Council for recent applications in our area. The red pins are placed approximately at the location of the property involved in the application and also show Brentwood’s reference number should the link fail for any reason.
The Parish Council’s responses are found under the ‘Consultee Comments’ heading within the documents section each application .
Local Development Plan
Brentwood Council plans to build thousands of homes on Green Belt land and other sites in the Borough including two large housing estates on fields alongside Red Rose Lane, Nine Ashes Road, and Fingrith Hall Lane, just yards from the village centre. To make matters worse, a considerable amount of additional housing construction has also been permitted by Brentwood to further increase the burden on Blackmore’s stretched infrastructure. The plan was formally adopted with Government approval by Brentwood Council in March 2022.
Objections to the plan made by the Parish Council and others were overruled by Brentwood officials and councillors.
For an update visit:
https://www.brentwood.gov.uk/-/adopted-local-plan