Sites submitted have not been properly assessed. RDC has not invested the effort required to properly assess all sites submitted. Instead RDC planning department have made their own lives easier by only considering larger sites because it requires less effort. Large sites which offer a larger number of dwellings have been preffered. The cost of this is evident in the preffered sites detailed in the following sections, as follows:
- a high number of them are on productive agricultural land which will be lost forever.
- a high number of them are wooded areas which will also be lost forever.
- some are even located in areas of higher risk of flooding (remember Rawreth earlier this year)
- most will require much investment in infrastructure before a single dwelling is provided on them, e.g. moving pylons, providing road infrastructure to the sites, bolstering existing transport infrastructure etc
I dread to think how much council tax payers money has been spent in helping RDC identify the "best" locations and sites for the additional housing that is required. A dart thrown at a map would have been a cheaper method to employ and no more destructive than RDC's current "best" solution.