A further public consultation will take place over the summer as South Gloucestershire Council prepares its new Local Plan. A Local Plan is the key planning document which describes and guides how and where new housing and other infrastructure can be delivered in the district.
The consultation will help the council prepare a response to the request from Bristol for South Gloucestershire to accommodate some of the new homes the City Council does not believe it can provide within their boundary. This request was not made in time to be incorporated into the previous round of consultation, which focussed on how South Gloucestershire could meet its own housing needs.
Neighbouring councils are under a legal obligation to cooperate when producing their Local Plans, and given that new homes, businesses, transport links and other infrastructure in South Gloucestershire and Bristol will have an impact on each other, it makes sense for council plans address strategic issues that cross authority boundaries.
The assessment carried out by South Gloucestershire Council has concluded that there is not the capacity to build new homes here to help meet Bristol’s needs. The council believes it can only meet its own needs, while protecting what makes the district the attractive place that it is for people to live and work in. Even then, in doing so it has had to make difficult decisions about the sites to be released.
The draft new Local Plan that was consulted on in the past year aimed to balance the needs for new homes and infrastructure for South Gloucestershire in a sustainable way.
Since the previous consultation, a number of additional sites where new homes and space could be set aside for new businesses have been proposed and considered, alongside a review of sites previously not included in the emerging strategy. The council is consulting on these sites now to ensure it can deliver a supply pipeline throughout the plan period, which will reduce the current threat of challenges from speculative developers.
In the same way as in the previous public processes, residents and stakeholders will be asked to share their views about growth in these areas.
The consultation documents, which will be published on Friday 19 July, will include maps that will help local people identify and relate to the questions being asked. The process will run for eight weeks and feedback received will be incorporated, alongside submissions made to the last consultation, when the council produces a final draft later this year. That draft will itself be subject to further public consultation and engagement, before being submitted to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate for review, before it can be formally adopted in 2025.
South Gloucestershire Council Cabinet Member for Planning, Regeneration and Infrastructure, said: “Our new Local Plan will help shape where and how people will live in South Gloucestershire for years to come. We want it to be developed with a keen ear on what our current residents want and need, as well as considering the needs of future residents and the generations to come.
“South Gloucestershire is a wonderful place to live. We have innovative and thriving businesses here, where local people are proud to work. Of course we are closely connected to Bristol and what each authority does impacts on the other, so we do need to consider their request for us to find space for more new homes to help meet their projected needs.
“However, all of our work to this point, examining possible places to build, tells us that we don’t have room for any more new homes than those that will meet our own needs. We promised we would take an evidence-based approach and have reached this conclusion after looking very carefully at sites across the district. Now we want to hear from local people about their thoughts, so we can respond with those views in mind as well.”
“We also promised last year that we would work tirelessly to bring forward more brownfield and urban sites. We inherited a position where barely 1,500 such sites had been found and so we urged people to come forward with new options. In this new consultation we have almost doubled that number, and we are now asking local people for their comments on those.
“It is important to remember that for every home we build on a brownfield or redevelopment site, that’s another home that won’t need to be built on a green field or new site.
“Through our consultations and conversations with residents, we have heard strong views and feelings about the importance of protecting the places people live now. We agree that development should enhance not damage our existing communities, which is why the proposals are spread across South Gloucestershire, with everyone taking a share, rather than concentrating all new home building in a few massive developments.
“We have also been able to correct some disinformation and allay some people’s fears about what new homebuilding, to provide a safe place to live for current and future generations, will really mean.
“We can say categorically that the green belt won’t be ‘destroyed’. At most, two per cent could be released. Our commons won’t be ‘destroyed’. We are working really positively to put together a scheme which adds lots more land to the commons and to forest parks. It will dramatically improve the connectivity between our green spaces, improving biodiversity and giving nature significant corridors in and around our communities and our landscape.”
The consultation process will launch on Friday 19 July and run until September 13 2024. Feedback received will be incorporated into a report to Cabinet in December this year, before a final consultation process in the new year. That feedback, alongside the updated draft plan, will then be submitted for assessment by the Planning Inspectorate in 2025.
The consultation documents and ways to take part will be published on the council website www.southglos.gov.uk/newlocalplan
