CRITICISM of the Ledbury Town Plan steering group’s work may be justified.
It did a brilliant job compiling our current Town Plan, but things have since changed drastically.
Each town’s Neighbourhood Plan is now the key; county planners will be legally obliged to pay due regard to these.
In spring 2012 many in the steering group urged that Ledbury’s plan be developed in tandem with the Town Plan, but our pleas were ignored and the very first Neighbourhood Plan meeting was held a whole year later.
Ledbury has sites already being targeted by property developers.
This month the National Planning Policy Framework, announced last March, has come into force and even more planning reforms will follow.
Until we have a Neigbourhood Plan in place Ledbury will be vulnerable, and fighting unwelcome planning applications will be made almost impossible.
Far from criticism being unjustified, a few people hold Ledbury’s future in their hands who have singularly failed to recognise the urgency of their task.
Perhaps our town council can address this in all our interests and impose some much-needed deadlines.
MARY BAXTER, Lugg Fields, Ledbury
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