Question
Please can you let me know the status of the Local Plan?
Minutes:
Question
Please can you let me know the status of the Local Plan?
Answer
As you know the Core Strategy Local Plan and the Managing Development Delivery (MDD) Local Plan, alongside the joint minerals and waste focused local plans, form the statutory development plan for the Borough. Planning law requires that planning applications are determined in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. We need an up to date and fully approved Local Plan to ensure that we have a defence against speculative development. At the moment our position is that we do not know what the Covid crisis will have done to our 5-year land supply.
Both the Core Strategy and the MDD are working to manage development in ways which meet the objectives of the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). They are therefore broadly up-to-date.
Work continues on preparing new local plans. When completed, the Local Plan Update will replace both the Core Strategy and the MDD, and the Joint Central and East Berkshire Minerals and Waste Local Plan will replace the current joint minerals and waste plans.
The NPPF confirms that emerging plans are a material consideration and that weight may be given to relevant policies according to:
a) the stage of preparation of the emerging plan;
b) the extent to which there are unresolved objections to relevant policies; and
c) the degree of consistency of the relevant policies in the emerging plan to the NPPF.
As you know we prepared a Local Plan update consultation. Responses were received from residents and other interested parties. The update was contingent on certain paradigms: the existing economic environments; the development of Grazeley would be infrastructure led with £¼bn HIF bid for infrastructure; and no adverse consequence from the review of the AWE emergency plan action zone. The emergency plan action zone has been extended well into our Borough and encompasses what was included in the Plan as the Grazeley settlement. Notwithstanding Homes for England working with us for some considerable time and the Government’s declaration of a garden settlement at Grazeley the HIF bid failed.
More importantly however the Coronavirus emergency has completely changed the economic environment. Because of the replies received and the changes in the paradigms we shall need to review our Plan update and hope to be in the condition to publish a revised Plan as soon as possible.
Supplementary Question
Thank you for that detailed update of where we are Mr Chairman I think I was asking about really what the status of that Local Plan update is. I think you have mainly covered it but perhaps just to say what we should be seeing next.
Supplementary Answer
There is a lot of work going on at the Council as to what we should do given the response to the consultation and we shall publish something, a revised plan, as soon as possible. We need to do so because we have already had threatening noises from speculative developers and I understand that several applications are being considered. So we need to put our defences up and the only absolute defence against speculative development is an up to date and fully developed Local Plan.