A report asking the Committee to approve the amended Local Development Scheme that contains the timetable for the production of planning policy documents including the Local Plan.

The Committee considered a report that proposed changes be made to the Council’s Local Development Scheme (LDS). A copy of the amended LDS document containing the proposed changes was attached to the report at Appendix 1.

The report stated that the Local Development Scheme (LDS) contained the programme for the production of planning policy documents that included the Local Plan. The most recent version of the Council’s LDS had been approved by the Committee at the meeting held on 15 November 2023 (Minute 20 refers) at which approval had also been granted to conduct the first consultation on the Local Plan Partial Update.

The report explained that the LDS needed to be amended to adjust the programme to account for the Local Plan Partial Update. The main change to the Local Development Scheme was a four-month delay in consulting on the next stage (Regulation 19) of the Local Plan Partial Update, which had resulted in the later stages being pushed back by a corresponding amount of time. In general each milestone was expected to be delayed by three to four months. The report set out the reasons for the proposed changes, these included that:

·       there had been changes made to national planning policy that needed to be taken into account concerning policy development, in particular a ministerial statement around sustainable design policy that had been published in December that would have implications for the policy approach contained in Council’s Regulation 18 consultation that had been published in November 2023;

·       there were key pieces of evidence that still needed to be obtained, including around the levels of need for commercial development, flood risk and development viability;

·       the recent consultation had resulted in a number of requests, including some from statutory consultees such as Natural England and the Environment Agency, to bring other policies into the scope of the update, which would have further time and resource implications;

·       there had been other priorities that had reduced the capacity of the Planning Policy team to progress the Local Plan Partial Update, including the introduction of statutory Biodiversity Net Gain for major developments and minor developments.

The report set out the main risks involved in delaying the production of the Local Plan Partial Update including that the period for which the Local Plan would be older than five years old would be extended further and that this could potentially have an impact on the outcome of development management decisions and appeals. There was also a risk that any changes made to national planning policy could have implications for the development of the Council’s own policies.

The report summarised the revised timetable for the production of the Local Plan Partial Update. The revised timetable was included in full within the proposed amended LDS document attached to the report at Appendix 1. The report also explained that the timetable for the production of Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs) had needed to be adjusted to ensure that there were adequate resources available to progress the production of the Local Plan Partial Update.

Resolved -   That the proposed amendments to the Local Development Scheme, as set out in Appendix 1, be approved.