Councillor Mahroof Hussain visited the BBC Red Bus at Parkgate and discussed concerns with the ‘Save our Greenbelt’ campaigners Simon Collett and Jennifer Searles in an interview by Andy Kershaw of BBC Radio Sheffield.
As part of the ongoing work by the councils work on the long-term development strategy for Rotherham, setting out policies and proposals for new housing, shopping and employment, and how you travel around and about the borough, it had along with other potential future developments a proposal to develop housing around 'Bassingthorpe Farm' - Greasbrough, Rawmarsh, Munsbrough, Wingfield, Kimberworth Park and Masbrough in the statutory Local Development Framework.
Simon and Jennifer raised their concerns with Andy Kershaw around the fact no further information has been supplied by the council since the consultation was completed in November 2009. These concerns were put to Councillor Mahroof Hussain who assured Simon and Jennifer that a full update on the latest position would be supplied to them.
Following Councillor Hussain’s intervention as promised he got the following response to the ‘Save our Greenbelt’ campaigners from the Strategic Director of Economic Development Services.
The Core strategy revised options consultation over summer 2009 exposed the public for the first time to the potential urban extensions and Green Belt release that our RSS housing target implies. This generated considerable public response, publicity in the local press and interest from ward members and local MPs. A significant number of complaints and FOI requests were also received which diverted officer time to resolve.
The volume of response took longer than expected to process, both in technical/business support and officer time. Ideally we would have published one feedback report. However, mindful that some time had passed since the consultation closed we decided to publish an Interim Feedback Report when the initial comments processing stage was complete. This is to be followed by a final report when officers have completed the assessment and response to all the comments.
The Interim Feedback Report was published on our website in Jan 2010 accompanied by an article in Rotherham News (Jan ed.) and an email to internal stakeholders. We intend to publish the Final Feedback Report at the end of March. In tandem with this we will email stakeholders and those on our database with an email address to notify them of the report. Likewise, we also intend to write to all consultees on our database and explain how they can access their individual comment and the Council’s response via the Limehouse on-line system.
Our next step is to consult on a full, final draft of the Core Strategy in late summer 2010 in tandem with “issues and options” for the Site Allocations Development Plan Document. This consultation will bring the potential developments sites much more to the fore and feature more advance publicity and “pre-app” consultation.
The full interview with Andy Kershaw appeared on BBC Radio Sheffield on Sunday 7th March at 7.45pm.