Kingston Council has been accused of betraying residents' trust over the way it is proceeding with plans for the borough's future.

The authority will decide on whether to move ahead with the final draft of its Local Plan, to guide where housing and infrastructure will be built up to 2043, after years of delay.

The plan sets out the delivery of nearly 20,000 new homes in proposed designated sites across the borough – including green belt land – over the 15 years from its expected adoption in 2028.

Residents and opposition councillors told the Lib Dem-run council's place committee last night (June 16) they felt the authority had not been transparent about the process so far, including not giving them enough time to scrutinise information related to it.

They said the council had published more than 1,700 pages of planning documents just days before the meeting, and more than 1,200 pages of information that day.

Locals staged a protest outside Kingston's Guildhall ahead of the meeting and said the authority needed to allow more time for the documents to be properly considered.

Gia Borg-Darcy, chair of Kingston and Surbiton Conservatives, said the council had declined her request to publish the plan before the local elections on May 7.

She said: "It was not, obviously, and it seems very clear we all know why. Now we face a threat to our green belt, plus three late documents with 1,200 pages of potential building sites which were dropped ahead of this meeting.

advertisement

"Residents have had no opportunity to comment."

She added: "This, councillors, is not democracy. This is a betrayal of the residents' trust."

Resident Caroline Shah also raised concerns the council had not provided evidence to show it had properly assessed the potential impact of the plan on the environment and infrastructure.

She said: "This plan has been in preparation for years, yet the legal and evidential basics have still not been met. In the meantime, large-scale development continues to be approved without the safeguards a lawful up-to-date Local Plan should provide.

"Approving the plan in its current form risks continuing that situation and exposes the council to legal challenge."

Kingston's current Local Plan was adopted in 2012, despite the authority originally pledging to publish a new plan by late 2021 or early 2022.

Councils in England are legally required to review their Local Plan at least every five years, which should then be updated if it is no longer found to be effective in managing housing, infrastructure and environmental concerns.

The delay means Kingston currently does not have an updated plan to meet housing needs, earmark sites suitable for development and set out infrastructure and environmental protections needed to support growth.

The borough faces a "presumption in favour of sustainable development" as a result, which makes it far harder to refuse planning applications.

Independent councillor James Giles slammed the short notice given to members to read the documents as "truly dire", particularly given the scale of development proposed.

He said: "I want genuinely affordable homes, but I can't support this version of the Local Plan where we're being asked to accept huge amounts of change after seven years of delay."

Lib Dem councillors said much of the information had been publicly available for some time, however, as the draft had not changed much since the last consultation in 2023.

They said if the authority did not make enough progress with the plan now, it risked losing control as the Government would take over.

Lib Dem councillor Roger Hayes said: "For whatever reasons, we are where we are. There can be no further delay.

"We either take this forward or we run the risk of losing everything."

Lib Dem councillor Andrew Wooldridge added the plan was the "result of many years of work, extensive evidence gathering and many rounds of public consultation" – during which time the authority had to respond to major changes in national planning policy.

The committee voted to recommend the final draft of the plan to full council on Monday (June 22), with 11 councillors voting in favour and two against.

The council will vote on Monday on publishing the final draft for public consultation over summer, before submitting it to the Planning Inspectorate by the end of the year for examination and formal approval.

This would allow the plan to be adopted by 2028.

We want to provide Kingston with more and more clickbait-free local news. To do that, we need a loyal newsletter following. Help us survive and sign up for our free weekly newsletter by clicking the link HERE.