Agenda item

(1)   Cabinet noted the work being undertaken on the Local Plan.

(2)   Cabinet approved the revised timetable for the Local Plan as detailed in the Local Development Scheme appended to this report and delegates authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to make any final minor editorial and typographical revisions to the document including any necessary to reflect the Cabinet’s discussions and decision.

Decision

(1)          That Cabinet notes the work being undertaken on the Local Plan.

(2)          That Cabinet approves the revised timetable for the Local Plan as detailed in the Local Development Scheme appended to this report and delegates authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to make any final minor editorial and typographical revisions to the document including any necessary to reflect the Cabinet’s discussions and decision.

Corporate Objectives

The Council’s Local Plan helps support all 6 corporate objectives:

•          A clean, safe and enjoyable environment: e.g. contains policies relating to the design and layout of new development that promote security and safe access;

•          Building strong and vibrant communities:  e.g. contains policies and sites to support new and enhanced facilities, while seeking to protect the vitality and viability of our town centres.

•          Ensuring economic growth and prosperity:  e.g. identifies and safeguards land to deliver future economic growth across the borough. 

•          Providing good quality affordable homes: e.g. sets the Borough’s overall housing target and the proportion of new homes that must be affordable;

•          Ensuring efficient, effective and modern service delivery: e.g. provides a clear framework upon which planning decisions can be made; and

•          Meeting the challenges of the climate emergency: through an overarching environmental objective and direct policy action.

Statutory Officer Comments:

Deputy Monitoring Officer:  

Regulation 10A of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 (as amended) requires local planning authorities to review their local plans once every five years from their adoption date. In addition to this, local planning authorities are required, through the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended by the Localism Act 2011), to produce a Local Development scheme (LDS).

Deputy S.151 Officer

A specific approved annual revenue budget along with approved reserve draw downs from the LDF reserve are in place to finance this programme of work. If this programme requires additional budget, requests for funds will need to be made in line with current financial regulations.

Advice

Cllr Anderson introduced the report and said, as members would be aware the Local Development Scheme was the timetable of development of the new Local plan, its potentially controversial as they have a lot of developers that want their scheme and develop first and ask questions later. Also it could be controversial as they have large sections of the communities that are strongly opposed to the proposals.

They went through the first draft of the Local plan some time ago now and they were required by legislation to meet their full allocation of housing, this had caused quite a lot of controversy with a record number of complaints and comments by the public. These comments were helpful in terms of facilitating the strategy they have to minimise development in the green belt and they are helpful in fighting our corner in terms of impact from the local area. Had they not done the consultation, arguing the consequences would have been quite serious in that it would not be possible to defend their development proposals.

Last July the Council paused developing the Local plan because of a number of issues. They Government also reformed the planning system so they are dealing with moving plates almost. They need to understand how the emerging legislation is going to work, however they have been taking grants from Government to pioneer and lead some of the reform and improvements to the planning system. They also need to find out how there is bodies involved in lobbying to get the calculation of the house building targets changes as they were not the only local authority that has been struggling with a very high housing allocation that they could not achieve.

They had then had the pandemic and the lasting effects of that. They have had the climate change agenda, which effects everything that the Council does, this is particularly important in terms of planning for the future of the borough.

As part of the development of the Local Plan they have to develop an infrastructure development plan, undertake transport studies, they have to look at urban capacities, which again will have been altered significantly due to the pandemic. They have to undertake a number of ecological studies for example looks the Chiltern Beachwood Special Area of Conservation. That would be an enormous piece of work. There had been good progress however, the council needs more time to complete and that will be necessary before they can continue any further with the Local Plan.

In terms of meeting their goal and minimising the amount of greenbelt development in the future moving forward and the changes locally are likely in the first draft of the Local plan, he wanted to stress the next stage of the consultation in June 2023 will be a regulation 18 consultation and not a regulation 19. That plan will contain the kind of development levels that they seriously think can be delivered in the borough whilst negotiating the 2 limits he spoke about previously. They need to find more housing locally but at the same time; they have to protect the greenbelt as much as they can.

He was happy to propose the new timetable laid out in the report.

Cllr Tindall asked that they had a number of developers in the area now and he wondered where this leaves them in relation to fighting them off in terms of the five-year land supply.

A Robinson responded that the sites that are designated as greenbelt and therefore any application that is designated in the green belt has to satisfy very special circumstances, case law and planning president up until now has confirmed that housing need alone does not justify very special circumstances.

Cllr Tindall asked if he could take from that that he was reasonably confident that they would be able to hold them at bay until we could get our Local Plan into production.

ARobinson said that he was reasonably confident that they would have the backing of national policy to defend applications. He was also in no doubt that, there would be applications and developers that would try to test that. What he did say is that there were cases elsewhere in the country where local authorities with aged Local plans not too far away where inspectors have taken a slightly different view on weather sites should come forward. He did stress that considerations on those sites were individual circumstances and therefore any decision that was reached by inspectors on the greenbelt in another authority does not necessarily apply to their situation.

Cllr Williams asked if the government were to change the figure for them to deliver, would that effect the five year supply figure. He looked at the delivery test figures issued a few weeks ago from the Government and the figure for Dacorum was in excess of 600 as a target, which does not seem to relate to the current local plan or any other figures that they had seen projected. He wondered if there was a direct correlation between those two things.

ARobinson said that the housing delivery test targets are based on the standard methodology figure, for them that would be 1023 but in the preceding year the government adjusted that figure to take into account Covid so the figure were lower as a result of that.

Cllr Williams wanted confirmation that the five year supply change if the government’s 1023 became a different figure.

ARobinson confirmed it would.

Recommendations agreed

(1)   Cabinet noted the work being undertaken on the Local Plan.

(2)   Cabinet approved the revised timetable for the Local Plan as detailed in the Local Development Scheme appended to this report and delegates authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to make any final minor editorial and typographical revisions to the document including any necessary to reflect the Cabinet’s discussions and decision.