Electric car charging requirements removed from Willingdon development plans

The developers behind a major housing scheme in Willingdon will no longer be required to provide electric car charging or superfast broadband, following the failure of Wealden’s local plan.
Electric car chargingElectric car charging
Electric car charging

At a meeting on Thursday (February 27), Wealden District Council’s planning committee south agreed to remove a condition from the second phase of the 390-home Brodricklands and Hamlands Farm site. 

The condition, which had been approved as part of the overall committee decision in December, would have required developers to come up with measures to reduce the number of polluting vehicles affecting the Ashdown Forest.

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These measures would have needed to include electric vehicle charging points at the site and the ability of all dwellings to connect to high speed broadband.

The need for these mitigation measures came as a result of policies laid out in the Wealden Local Plan, which had begun its first stage of examination at the time of the December planning decision. 

But with the failure of the local plan at the examination (and its subsequent withdrawal last month), these measures can no longer be backed up by policy. 

The application was one of four in a similar position, all of which had been approved in recent months but were brought back to the committee in light of the local plan’s failure.

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They included: a 90-home development on land east of Hailsham Road and north of Peelings Lane in Stone Cross; an outline application for up to 108 houses in Shepham Lane in Polegate; and the building of a log cabin at Little Harness Farm in Rushlake Green.

The council’s position was set out at the opening of  the meeting by planning officer Stacey Robins.

He said: “Amongst the quite long agenda we have today there are a series of items which have been considered by this committee before.

“The only reason those items are back before the committee are to seek an update to the positive resolution to grant planning permission in all those cases having regard to the failure of the submission Wealden Local Plan. 

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“There are no new issues on any of those cases other than to withdraw the tariff-based mitigation on the special area of conservation on the Ashdown Forest and to update the conditions that were in the submission local plan.

“The reason for that, as I am sure members will be fully aware, is because the plan and the entire strategy were declared unsound by the examining inspector, so it would be unlawful for the council to continue to insist that a payment is made in regard to mitigation.”

In light of this advice, all four applications were altered to remove conditions from the previously approved schemes.



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