From the Leader: The next Local Plan

My subject this week is the next local plan, known as Local Plan 2045. Work on this plan has begun at the government’s insistence, even though the local plan just finishing its prolonged inspection (known as the Local Plan Update) has not yet been formally adopted. If the council had a choice, we would not have begun work on this new local plan so soon, but the government has told us we must.

When the Local Plan Update is adopted, probably in early 2027, our housing allocation will be 748 new dwellings a year.  But we will be allowed to proceed at that level of new development only for about three years. During those three years, the government expects us to prepare, have inspected, and then adopt Local Plan 2045. This is an unrealistic timescale: we have no influence over the time the inspection process takes, and for the Local Plan Update it has taken eighteen months so far.

When Local Plan 2045 comes into force, probably sometime in 2031, we will be required to approve over 1,300 new dwellings a year for the life cycle of that plan. Given the large quantities of housing delivered over the last decades, and the limited amount of suitable land still available, it seems an impossibly demanding requirement.

This week saw the publication of a Scoping Consultation, as prescribed by planning rules. It provides opportunities to comment on a number of different matters relating to the new plan, not least the sites proposed by landowners and developers.

I should stress, to avoid all possible doubt, that the map of proposed sites in the Scoping Consultation is not an indication of what will be agreed by the council. It represents developers’ aspirations, not council views.

Some of the sites promoted have been proposed before - both the Ruscombe Green Belt site and Ashridge in Hurst were put forward for inclusion in the Local Plan Update but rejected as unsuitable. Others, such as a Green-Belt proposal in Wargrave, and a multitude of pieces of land in the south of the borough, are new.

All the sites promoted to the council by landowners and developers will be subject over the coming months to rigorous assessment by professional planning officers to see whether they pass three key tests. First, are they truly available? (Some appear to have been proposed without the landowners’ permission.) Second, do they comply with national and local planning policies? (Some - how many is impossible to say at this stage - will fall at that hurdle.) And, finally, can they be delivered in the timescale of the plan?

In brief, we are at the beginning of a very long process, which will run for at least three years before final decisions have to be made. At this stage nothing has been decided by the council.

The Scoping Consultation provides the first opportunity to comment on the sites proposed by developers and landowners. I urge everyone with views to submit them as part the consultation, which closes on 16 November. The Scoping Consultation can be found on the council's Local Plan 2045 page.