Serplan’s regional planning guidance will be considered in a five-week public examination which begins today at Canary Wharf, in London’s Docklands.
The south-east local authorities plan for housing, transport and economic development until 2016 is described as arguably the most crucial planning inquiry since the second world war.
The panel will decide whether southern England must accommodate a population boom and will focus on Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, the Isle of Wight, West and East Sussex, Kent and Surrey. London is included but housing issues will be dealt with over a different period. The guidance envisages cutting back on car use, empty properties in town centres and boosting woodlands. Serplan also wants to reduce the economic gap between the west and eastern and coastal areas.
Financial Times 18/05/99 page 12
