Martin welcomes RSS delay

9.27.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 17th Jun 2009

A LEGAL CHALLENGE in the East of England has scuppered the government's chances of announcing the final version of the South West's Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) this month, a development welcomed by Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood. The challenge was based on the failure of the Eastern RSS to make a proper assessment of the strategy's impact on the environment. The announcement has not been made in Parliament by ministers but in a short emailed letter to local authorities by the regional director at the Government Office of the South West, Jon Bright.

The legal battle in the East of England has strong echoes of the Commons Environmental Audit Committee's call for the RSSs to be suspended until their environmental impact had been properly assessed. Martin Horwood was a co-author of the EAC report.

"This delay buys valuable time for local campaign groups to co-ordinate action and increase support" says Martin. "It gives our local authorities more time to prepare their own legal challenges to the south west RSS. And it raises the outside chance of the RSS not being implemented at all before the next General Election. If that happens and if, as everyone expects, Labour goes down to a crushing defeat, a new House of Commons could vote to stop the whole mad strategy in its tracks. There are quite a few 'ifs' in all this, but this delay gives us a little more hope that we really can save the countryside around Cheltenham."