The draft new Local Plan for South Gloucestershire has now been formally submitted to the Government’s planning inspectors.
This administrative milestone will allow them to look at the plan and supporting evidence in detail and firstly determine that it meets the requirements of current planning laws and guidance.
Once they are satisfied that it is compliant, they will run a process called an Examination In Public (EIP). This involves the council and some of those stakeholders and residents who made submissions to the consultation process earlier this year, being called to give evidence at public meetings that are expected to take place in Spring 2026.
Assuming the Planning Inspectorate find the Plan to be sound, the council will be able to formally adopt it as their overarching planning policy for the coming 15 years.
The draft Plan has been submitted to inspectors alongside extensive supporting documentation, as well as the feedback received from the public and other stakeholders in the statutory Regulation 19 consultation, which ran from February to April this year.
The Planning Inspectorate will manage the EIP process and will determine which organisations and individuals are called to give evidence next year.
Copies of the draft Plan, the supporting documents and the consultation responses that were submitted are available to view online on the council website: www.southglos.gov.uk/LPexamination.
Developing the new Local Plan has been a priority for the council, in order, once adopted, to bring the building of new homes and supporting infrastructure back under local control.
Underpinning this is the commitment to achieve a democratically agreed spatial strategy and planning policies decided by the council’s elected members, rather than seeing decisions taken through the planning appeal process.
Having a robust Local Plan also means that South Gloucestershire can maintain and sustain both its immediate housing land supply requirements, as well as a longer-term supply of genuinely affordable allocated housing sites, which will giving certainty to our communities and the housing development industry.
South Gloucestershire Council Cabinet Member for Planning, Regeneration, and Infrastructure, Councillor Chris Willmore, said: “We have developed this Plan with extensive local involvement and input, running several formal phases of consultation and after countless meetings and discussions with local people and community groups, as well as with housebuilders and other stakeholders.
“We are proud that the new Plan includes commitments to go above and beyond legal minimums in terms of affordable housing provision, for example, to address the acute housing affordability crisis facing local people. It will also help us deliver age-friendly homes for the next generation of our residents as they get older.
“It also sets out the ways in which we will take meaningful steps to protect and enhance our natural environment, through measures such as ensuring new homes are cheaper to live in and leave a smaller carbon footprint.
“It’s not perfect. It will mean new development on 2.53 per cent of South Gloucestershire’s existing Green Belt land, in keeping with new Government directives, however it protects the vast majority and will help to make sure the area remains an attractive place to live and work for years to come.”
In recent weeks, the supporting evidence that has been submitted alongside the Plan itself has been updated, to account for new information as it emerges, however it is fundamentally the same Plan that was the subject to the consultation earlier this year.
The Government has recently announced that South Gloucestershire has been selected as one of the 12 potential New Towns locations, in relation to the development underway on the former Filton Airfield, and we have provided an updated assessment of the Plan in light of this.
