Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

Wiltshire Council news from Ernie Clark.

Your Independent councillor for Hilperton.

The application to build 30 houses on the nursery site in Marsh Road has seen the appeal by the developers rejected by a Planning Inspector. Had the appeal been allowed it would have had serious consequences for Wiltshire.

There were two aspects to the case; the fact that the site is outside the Village Policy Limit (but the scheme didn’t have the correct mix of houses) and the applicant claiming that Wiltshire didn’t have a five year supply of housing land (a government requirement). The Inspector decided that the developing Wiltshire Plan does have an adequate land supply and that there is a case for Hilperton to retain its VPL.

The latter is justification for all the effort that the parish council, local residents and I put into ensuring that the WC spatial planners didn’t get their way and have the VPL removed from Hilperton. The question it now raises in my mind is exactly how competent are some of the ‘long term’ planners at WC? With luck, the main advocate of the ‘Remove the VPL’ idea has applied for Voluntary Redundancy from WC. I live in hope!

Wiltshire Council now only allows a set number of towns/villages to review their parking restrictions each year. For 2013 Hilperton is one of them. The Parish Council has suggested four places for new/extended double yellow lines but there are one or two more that residents have asked me for over the past few years. A meeting was recently held to see if these 'extra' requests can be accommodated.