A DISPUTE over a website link put the brakes on public hearings for a major housing plan.
The local development plan is intended to set out where new development should take place including more than 2,000 new homes centred around Chepstow and Caldicot as well as Abergavenny and Monmouth.
The hearings, originally due to begin in June, will now take place in September after Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW) said Monmouthshire County Council failed to properly publicised them as required by law.
Council deputy leader Paul Griffiths, who is responsible for the plan, said the issue was due to the council publishing a website link to the hearing timetable rather than displaying it directly on its website.
At June’s council meeting, Cllr Griffiths said: “PEDW gave its view the provision of a link did not conform to the legal requirement on the council and the procedural timetable should appear directly on the council’s website rather than through a link.
“That was their judgement, it would not have been mine, but their judgement matters in this case and as a result the arrangements are now directly available on the council website.”
Despite the setback, he stressed that the examination of the plan had not been suspended and was still moving forward.
The council has been working on the current plan for the past four years, which has included a number of consultations at earlier stages.
It identifies four key housing sites, including 770 homes between Caldicot and Portskewett, 500 homes east of Abergavenny, more housing in Monmouth, and 146 new homes at Mounton Road in Chepstow.
The Chepstow site also includes a care home and hotel.
Without an adopted plan, the council risks being unable to control new development while the plan’s requirement that 50 per cent of all new homes are affordable is key to the Labour run council’s aim to boost low cost housing.
Conservative Lisa Dymock, who represents Portskewett, asked if the council would hold a review as to “how this misjudgement was made” and consider any lessons learned.
Cllr Griffiths said he believed a Wales-wide review should be held involving PEDW, the Welsh Government and local authorities which “should give serious consideration as to whether a link is, or is not, an effective means of communication. It may well be in the future that we will move into the 21st century and PEDW and Welsh Government will recognise the link works effectively.”
