Shock News Leaked at the Planning Enforcement Meeting on Mon 2nd Oct 2023

By Nige on October 2, 2023 at 4:42 pm
Type: News Category: Handover
Tags: Announcements | Bloor Homes | East Midlands Landscaping | Vale of White Horse District Council

Quick update on the outcome of the enforcement meeting held on Mon 2nd Oct 2023. We were advised about this meeting on Thu 21st Sep, but it’s fair to say it wasn’t entirely clear how this meeting fitted into the overall plan for handover.

This news item focuses on the critical messages that were leaked at this meeting. You can find out more about the more mundane aspects of this meeting here: Key Points Raised at the Enforcement Meeting.

Our Vale of White Horse District Council (VWHDC) contact represented Planning Enforcement. Prior to the meeting, he suggested this meeting would focus on potential planning breaches relating to landscaping on the site including maintenance of the balancing ponds. We had the opportunity of raising other issues during the same visit.

Effectively, this is our step 1 of the handover process. I.e. we need to ensure Bloor has completed all works in line with expectation. Unfortunately, VWHDC Planning Enforcement only recognise the enforcement element and they expect another VWHDC team to get involved in handover.

We prepared an update to the notes we had taken from the last two Pre-Inspection meetings held in Oct 2021 and March 2022 and checked this with the wider resident community.

The meeting didn’t exactly go as we expected! Although we had the opportunity to raise a number of other related issues, the entire focus was the balancing ponds. We will issue notes shortly.

The key points that came out of this meeting were surprising to say the least:

• The Bloor Adoptions Manager advised that a Certificate of Substantial Completion has been issued by VWHDC to Bloor at some point “early summer”.
• We understand the Residents’ Association was deliberately excluded from this process.
• Not only that, but VWHDC didn’t even have the professional courtesy to advise us that this significant event had taken place.

We have therefore reached out to the VWHDC handover representation to give him the opportunity to explain:

• What’s been going on behind the scenes for the past 18 months?  When did VWHDC restart work on handover?
• Why the Residents’ Association were excluded from this process, especially considering we were fully engaged as of March 2022?
• Why the Residents’ Association hasn’t even been informed about this significant step being taken?

What is disappointing is that we have been chasing VWHDC for updates for the past 18 months (through our local councillor) and have been given the cold shoulder at every turn.

We also need the following at VWHDC’s earliest convenience:

• A copy of the certificate.  This needs to confirm the date that the inspection took place, together with when the certificate was issued.
• We also need to see the Remedial Actions List and VWHDC’s plan for moving towards issuing a Certificate of Final Completion.

We have given VWHDC the option of us raising another Freedom of Information Act request to secure this information, but stressed that it may be easier on all sides to avoid that formality.