 As part of the council's continued commitment to increase transparency and publicise current planning issues more widely to parishes and members of the public, Dean Hermitage, the new Director of Planning, has launched a bi-annual Parish Briefing. This is the first edition.
The purpose of the newsletter will be to provide updates on the emerging Local Plan as well as other achievements and milestones within the council's planning service.
In this edition:
- Housing targets
- Local Plan update
- Design Code
- Designation
- Neighbourhood planning
Earlier this month, the Secretary of State announced that while ‘housing targets’ would remain an important part of the planning system, he intended to make them a “starting point with new flexibilities to reflect local circumstances”. Parts of the national press reported this in terms that the government was abolishing housing targets. This is not the case. At present, it's only rhetoric.
When we talk about ‘housing targets’ we really mean the government’s standard methodology which councils use to work out minimum local housing needs figures i.e. where we get our 14,000+ new homes target from.
Currently, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPFF) expects councils to follow the standard methodology to arrive at their housing target and then make a local plan to set out how and where this target will be met. Many cite the methodology as being unfair. Indeed, because Uttlesford has seen its population grow significantly in recent years (16.8% according to the 2021 Census), our population projections and therefore housing requirement is high. As the district is such an agreeable place to live, more people have been moving here and thus housing need has increased.
What do Mr Gove’s announcements mean for our local plan? Currently, it is just a proposal. Legislation and national policy remain unchanged. We still have a target of 14,000+ new homes to meet in the forthcoming local plan.
The Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has said it will be consulting on proposed changes to the NPPF which it anticipates publishing this side of Christmas. It is also taking the Levelling up & Regeneration Bill through parliament. We do not know the specific wording that will be contained within these documents as they relate to ‘housing targets’. Even when we do, we do not know what will emerge at consultation and in the commons' amendment process, respectively.
Whatever they contain, it is unlikely that any new policy or legislation will be in place within the next six months. Therefore, we will continue to progress our draft local plan on the basis of current legislation and policy.
We will of course have one eye on what is happening in Whitehall and ensure we are nimble and flexible enough to take account of any future changes to the national policy landscape – which could very well work out in our favour.
Consultation on a Draft Local Plan, which will contain the council’s yet to be decided provisional choice of strategy, sites and policies, will be undertaken in summer 2023.
This will provide parishes and anyone else interested an opportunity to support, oppose or otherwise comment on any of the content and thus better inform the council’s decisions as what should go in the ‘final’ plan that the council will seek to adopt.
There will be another consultation at that stage, but with an independent planning inspector considering the responses as part of his/her examination of the Plan.
In the meantime, officers are undertaking a new assessment of all the sites under consideration, in the light of various concerns of parishes and others previously raised as site suitability issues.
We are now using clearer and more robust methods, and the information helpfully provided by parishes in their responses to 2021’s ‘SLAA Technical Consultation’ has been further reviewed to ensure it is accurately captured and used in the sites assessment and subsequent selection and draft allocation processes. No decisions have yet been taken on which sites should or should not be allocated for development.
Working assumptions do have to be made along the way, in order to explore, test, and then discard where appropriate different potential spatial scenarios in order to find the best achievable potential outcome, but such ‘assumptions’ are not definitive, nor do they prejudice the council’s decision making processes.
Officer recommendations on which sites should or should not be allocated will be ready in early summer.
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The various workshops and walkabouts on a Design Coding for Uttlesford have been well attended and well received.
There is currently a youth art competition in connection with this – you can see full details here.
Draft Design Coding is now being prepared, and parishes will be further consulted on this, likely in the spring.
Input to date has been appreciated.
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Designation
In February, Uttlesford was ‘designated’ by the Secretary of State due to the number of decisions on major planning applications made between April 2018 and March 2020 that had been subsequently overturned on appeal (i.e exceeding a threshold of 10%). Until we achieve de-designation, applications for major development (10+ houses) can be made to the Planning Inspectorate (known as S62a applications). Uttlesford is of course a consultee in such cases and makes its position known to the Inspectorate.
Due to the time lag in the government’s awaiting, recording and publishing of appeal decision statistics, it will likely be another two years until all the improvements we are and will continue to be making to the planning service show through in these national statistics.
Notwithstanding that more than two-thirds of such major site applicants are choosing to submit to Uttlesford and not the Planning Inspectorate, we are developing an action plan, in consultation with DLUHC, that will set out further improvements to be made to the planning service and a series of agreed performance measures.
Officials from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities visited Saffron Walden on 7 December and were pleased with the significant progress already made. The next round of government planning statistics will be published next February. These will still be based on decisions made before many of our improvements were made and thus it will be no surprise if they show Uttlesford with an appeals record remaining below that threshold set by government.
In liaison with elected members, officers continue to roll out various improvements across the planning service. I trust that you are already beginning to see these improvements in practice.
Thank you for all your input into all our planning processes this year.
And congratulations to the several parishes who ‘made’ a Neighbourhood Plan in 2022, adding to the impressive assemblage of plans in Uttlesford.
Please note – The Planning Team is working up until 1pm on Friday 23 December, then 28 to 30 December. The team will then be available from 3 January.
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