According to figures published by the Department of Communities and Local Government, the public examination of the South Cambs and Cambridge Local Plan is the longest running in the whole country ever.

The draft Local Plan was submitted for inspection in March 2014, over three years and eight months ago – and will have taken over four years by the time it is adopted next year. The next longest is Rochdale’s, which took three years and five months to completion.

South Cambs Liberal Democrats welcomed news of some progress towards the adoption of the new Local Plan for the district, but condemned the extremely long time it is taking, as well as the consequential damage that is being done to dozens of villages in the meantime.

Some 5,000 houses that are not in the Local Plan have had to be approved so far because the inspector as yet to publish her final report so that it can be considered as emerging policy and she has not yet confirmed the joint South Cambs/Cambridge housing trajectory figure.

By the time this ordeal is finished, we will have had thousands of houses imposed on us in an unplanned way in locations that were rejected by us when preparing the Local Plan.

In 2014 Lib Dems warned the Local Plan was not ready for submission and our prediction that a lot more evidence would be required as regrettably come to be true.  If the plan had been more robust we may now have it in place to fight the inappropriate applications.