An updated version of South Gloucestershire’s new Local Plan has been published ahead of the next meeting of Cabinet, with a final stage of consultation due to begin at the end of February, subject to the approval of Full Council.
All local authorities are required to have an up-to-date Local Plan and, over the past few years, the council has been preparing to deliver a plan that will help guide development and shape planning decisions in the district for the next 15 years.
Crucially, having an effective and up-to-date Local Plen helps to protect the district from speculative development and ‘planning by appeal’.
All Local Plans are required to comply with the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The NPPF sets out a wide range of requirements for councils, including setting targets for the number of new homes they must allow to be built in their area.
The Local Plan helps local authorities determine where those homes should go, but also supports the achievement of other council priorities, such as helping to make South Gloucestershire cleaner and greener, helping to tackle inequalities and to improve transport and other infrastructure for local communities.
In getting to this advanced stage in the Plan’s preparation, a series of public consultations have already been held, allowing residents and other stakeholders, including town and parish councils and other groups, to feed in their views and ideas.
The version being published now assesses that feedback and sets out to describe how South Gloucestershire can meet the requirements of planning law, while achieving local objectives, including protecting high-quality green spaces and providing safe, stable and affordable homes for people in the area.
The proposals set out in the latest version of the Plan are groundbreaking. They are innovative in terms of taking action to deliver carbon friendly homes, which will meet peoples’ housing needs, but also help to protect South Gloucestershire as a place people want to live by protecting the environment.
The proposals will meet the requirements of the latest Government guidance, as well as the needs of local people. For example:
- The new Plan will help to deliver affordable, decent, safe and sustainable homes. This will help to tackle the local housing waiting list, ensure new homes are environmentally friendly and can be heated more affordably.
- The new Plan identifies enough areas of land to develop wind and solar energy to make the district carbon neutral.
- By having an up-to-date Local Plan, which complies with Government guidance, it will stop well-made local planning decisions being overturned by appeals.
- The Plan aims to provide a choice of age-friendly homes to meet the aspirations of older people, and any specialist housing need, including with care where appropriate.
- The Plan identifies places for new homes and sites for gypsy, traveller and travelling showpeople.
- It will mean housing is delivered in the most sustainable locations, where schools, health and transport issues can best be addressed.
- It limits the loss of local Green Belt land, which is under pressure from changes to national guidance, with 2.53 per cent of the Green Belt in South Gloucestershire being released to make way for new housing and employment allocations.
South Gloucestershire Council Cabinet Member for Planning, Regeneration, and Infrastructure, Councillor Chris Willmore, said: “Having a new, fit-for-purpose and legally sound Local Plan is non-negotiable. What is negotiable is how we choose to go about making a plan that really works for local people and communities. That’s what we’ve tried to do through all our consultations so far and why it’s been so heartening to have had some really constructive engagements and community conversations with people in the last eighteen months.
“The plan that we are bringing forward recognises that there is a desperate need for more homes, so that the next generation of local people have the choice to live here if they want to. It will allow people coming to the area, for work or because they want to enjoy living in our towns and villages, the chance to do so.
“Crucially, it will allow us to have a greater degree of control over where new homes are built and ensure that they are genuinely affordable to live in and better for our environment.
“A Local Plan is about so much more than houses though. The allocations we want to make to allow for green energy use, to protect our high quality green spaces and make transport and other social infrastructure integral to the development of new homes, will mean that we can continue to enjoy the benefits of living in South Gloucestershire.
“The changes made to the planning system by the new Government has undoubtedly presented us with challenges, in terms of the mandatory housing targets and the opening up to potential development of Green Belt land. The proposals in this draft Plan positively respond to those challenges, however, and will allow us to retain control of our planning system and make improvements to our local area over the next 15 years.”
On Monday 3 February, Cabinet will be asked to recommend the draft Plan to Full Council. Full Council will then be asked to consider it at their meeting on Wednesday 12 February, and to approve the Plan to progress to the next phase of statutory consultation, which will run for six weeks as required under the Regulations.
Full details of how to take part and make submissions to the consultation will be published by the council when the process opens.
Consultation responses and submissions will then be provided to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate, which will examine the Plan to determine if it is sound. It is expected that the Inspectorate will hold in-person hearings on the plan in the Spring next year. Details of how to participate in that phase of the process will be published by the council in due course.
