Row brews over Hatchfield letter
A ROW is brewing over a letter suggesting that a council's chief executive "rebuffed" an attempt to find a compromise over legal action taken against the authority.
The compromise could have seen the controversial Hatchfield Farm site permanently taken out of the council's blueprint for future homes development in Newmarket and saved it tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees.
The letter was sent to Forest Heath and Newmarket town councillors by Tattersalls.
The bloodstock auctioneers, together with Godolphin. Darley Stud Management, Jockey Club Estates, the Newmarket Trainers' Federation, Bill Gredley's Unex Group and the Save Historic Newmarket Action Group have legally challenged the implementation of Forest Heath's Core Strategy.
The letter claimed David Burnip had not only turned down the opportunity of taking Hatchfield Farm, a development plan which has already been rejected by the council's planning committee, out of the core strategy, but had also instructed his officers to cancel meetings with Newmarket's racing industry representatives to discuss the preparation of a new planning policy document linked to the postion of the racing industry in the town.
The Journal has discovered that earlier this month district councillors were asked by Mr Burnip to agree to instruct solicitors to act for the council in the legal proceedings.
The council has refused to comment publicly on the issue.
The Tattersalls letter is set to be discussed behind closed doors at an extraordinary meeting of the council on Tuesday when it is the only item on the agenda.
It claimed that even though the legal challenge referred to the core strategy as a whole, the grounds of the challenge specifically referred to the partial quashing of the Hatchfield Farm part of it, an approach it said was consistent with the planning committee's decision last month to refuse a planning application for 1,200 homes on the site.
The council's solictors have since written to the racing industry's legal representatives claiming that the letter was "a deliberate attempt to cause friction" between the council's officers and its members and that it should not have been sent.
"They asked for an assurance that "the conduct would not be repeated".
On Monday Newmarket Town councillors were told by Mr Burnip in a letter that, while he accepted the council had "interest in the future of Newmarket", it would be "inappropriate" to involve them further in any correspondence about these matters."
The council's core strategy, its blueprint for development in the Newmarket district over the next 30 years, was formally adopted by councillors in May.
The racing industry claims that the document is unlawful and that the effect on Newmarket's world famous racing industry of using Hatchfield Farm for an "urban extension" to the town had not been properly assessed.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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