The imposed targets, which the Canvey Island Independent Party (CIIP) often misrepresent as willingly approved by the borough’s Conservative majority, are no longer legally enforceable. Castle Point Borough Council (CPBC) will now be free to determine its own policy for new housing in the constituency.
Eric Pickles, the Communities secretary, said he was scrapping both the controversial target and ‘regional strategies’ which were meant to help ensure the goal was reached.
Mr Pickles said he was ‘hammering another nail in the coffin of unwanted and an unaccountable regional bureaucracy.’
He said: ‘Communities will no longer have to endure the previous Government's failed Soviet tractor-style top-down planning targets.
‘They were terrible, expensive, time-consuming ways to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the Green Belt.
‘They were a national disaster that robbed local people of their democratic voice, alienating them and entrenching opposition against new development.’
Mr Pickles said, the Coalition would hand powers back to councils to decide where new homes were built through new local plans, while at the same having powers to ‘prevent encroachment on the Green Belt’ around villages, towns and cities.
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