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| Morley Carr Farm, the site of 300-350 new homes in Yarm |
None of the aforementioned sites in Yarm had been earmarked for development by Stockton Council in its current Core Strategy. And whilst developers have either owned these sites or owned an option on them for decades, they had never been brought forward before the NPPF was implemented.
In the Conservative Manifesto 2010, it was stated, "We will create a presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning system". Albeit a rare example of a manifesto pledge actually being honoured and delivered, the manifesto was silent on what else was to follow.
More detail was provided in the Coalition Agreement. It said, "We will... return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils." Excellent, we all thought.
It continued, "We will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants lived." Marvellous, we cried. And about time too.
Unfortunately, and as was ever thus, the devil was in the detail of what was to follow.
Paragraph 49 of the National Planning Policy Framework has been the absolute killer. It reads, "Housing applications should be considered in the context of the presumption of sustainable development. Relevant policies for the supply of housing should not be considered up-to-date if the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites."
In situations where parts of a planning authority's local plan is 'absent, silent or relevant policies are out-of date', the NPPF takes precedence. This was a situation a majority of councils, including Stockton Council, found themselves in over a year after the NPPF came into effect.
Suddenly, those council policies consulted on extensively with the public prior to approval which had protected the greenfield sites around Yarm for years, and which directed housing developments to the parts of the borough where they were both wanted and needed, were worthless, supplanted by the NPPF cuckoo in the nest. The presumption in favour of approving new housing developments became king.
If you clicked on the links attached to the three sites in Yarm I mentioned earlier, or if you have read other reports in the press I haven't included, you may have noticed one thing all the reports have in common - James Wharton MP criticising Labour-led Stockton Council for approving these planning applications.
Unfortunately, whilst he's quick to blame Labour for such planning travesties in and around Yarm after the event, his silence prior to those decisions has been deafening.
Mr Wharton failed to object to a single application, let alone speak up for residents at the relevant hearings; residents complain he failed to provide any meaningful support whatsoever to those opposing the schemes; he has consistently refused to utter a word of criticism of the NPPF which allowed these unwanted schemes to go ahead; and, despite the wholesale concern of residents, he didn't even bother to attend July's parliamentary committee debate on 'Localism in Planning' when a number of principled Conservative MPs queued up to represent their residents and, without exception, criticise the NPPF.
This is hardly surprising. For a young and ambitious MP who 'hardly ever rebels' against the party machine, and who has a slender majority of just 332, the NPPF and resulting approval of 1,000 new homes in a traditionally Conservative-voting ward within his marginal constituency could only have been regarded by Mr Wharton as manna from heaven.
That he, and the Conservative party through the NPPF, have not just let down but so badly betrayed residents in Yarm is unforgiveable.
But it isn't just Mr Wharton who is culpable.
When Morley Carr Farm was brought to the planning committee, then Green Lane, and the first time Mount Leven Farm was brought to the committee, not one single Conservative councillor (myself included) followed the national party's wishes and voted to approve these applications.
However, after the Mount Leven Farm application was initially rejected, the developer submitted a second, virtually identical, application was again brought before the committee just months after the first. Second time around, the application was approved with the committee voting 6-5 in favour.
'How did this happen' you might ask. The answer is simple - Councillor Ken Lupton (the chairman of the Stockton Conservatives Association, and leader of the Conservative group on Stockton Council) changed his mind, having voted against the application initially but voting for it the second time around.
Had the Conservative leader voted against the application, as he had previously, it would have been rejected. It is also noticeable that Councillor Lupton has been silent on what prompted his unexplained and devastating volte face.
It goes without saying that I could no longer remain a member of a party who nationally brought forward a policy so damaging to those I represent, and who locally can be described, at best, as duplicitous and opportunist.
I am proud to say that, as a member of the planning committee, I have listened to residents' concerns and not voted to approve a single inappropriate development in the area.
It is a crying shame that the leader of the local Conservatives cannot say the same thing.
