Agenda item

To receive the report of the head of planning (attached).

Mike Murray, Cabinet member for planning policy including the local plan, introduced this item.  Also present to answer questions was Andrew Maxted, interim planning policy project lead.

The committee considered three documents:

·         A report setting out the main implications and next steps in taking the Local Plan 2031: Part 1 forward.

·         An appendix detailing the Inspector’s proposed Main Modifications.

·         A paper providing responses to questions submitted by the committee in advance of the meeting.

Members expressed concerns about the late circulation of the first two of the documents which gave them insufficient time to assimilate detailed information in advance of the meeting.

In response to questions and issues raised by the committee, the Cabinet member reported that:

Main Implications and next steps

·         Subject to the Inspector’s formal acceptance of the proposed main modifications, the public consultation to be carried out during the summer would be extended for up to two weeks outside of the maintained school holidays.

·         The Cabinet member believed that the Inspector’s suggestion that the Local Plan Part 2 would determine the quantum of Oxford City’s unmet housing need was helpful insofar as it enabled Part 1 to progress.  It was anticipated that the Oxfordshire Growth Board would quantify this unmet need in the autumn. 

·         If the Local Plan Part 2 was not adopted within two years of the adoption of Part 1 then the council would no longer have a five year housing land supply.

·         The Government required local planning authorities’ local plans to meet national standards and not exceed them.  Some modifications had been made to meet this requirement.

·         The Local Plan was a living document which would need to updated in the light of changes to national planning policy and government guidance.

·         The Inspector supported the council’s green belt allocations but did not support the unallocated site review.

Main Modifications

·         The Main Modifications were proposed by the Inspector. Therefore, whilst the committee might wish to see clarifications or amended wording, the Cabinet member did not consider the benefit of making changes to the text outweighed the risk of delaying the adoption of the plan.

·         The reduction in the number of properties arising from the removal from the Plan of three strategic site allocations at East Hanney and Harwell Campus did not need to be addressed in Part 1 but could be addressed in Part 2 if the Council wished to consider this.

·         The revised Monitoring Framework referred to in the schedule of main modifications but not attached to the current version of the Main Modifications Schedule would be included in the final, published document. NB: the Revised Monitoring Framework was included within the Strikethrough Plan and thus available for Scrutiny Members to review if they wished to. 

·         The recruitment of two planning officers on six month agency contracts to provide additional capacity with regard to progressing Local Plan Parts 1 and 2 simultaneously would be funded by savings in salaries elsewhere.

·         The cost of producing the Local Plan Part 1 had not been calculated.

Conclusions and lessons learned

A member expressed the view that many of the public concerns arising from the public consultation on the Local Plan: Part 1 could have been avoided if there had been a prior consultation on the green belt.  The Cabinet member’s response was that this would have extended the process considerably. The Council’s proposed changes to the Green Belt were consulted on in detail during the Housing Delivery Update consultation (Feb 2014) and the Pre-Submission Consultation (Nov 2014).

In response to a question about the lessons learned from the process, the Cabinet member reported that:

·         It had been worth spending as much time as possible preparing for the examination.

·         By frequently consulting informally it had been possible to respond to public concerns more speedily. For example, two bulletins had been published recently, in addition to the formal stages of Local Plan consultation, that provide an update on progress of the emerging Local Plan 2031: Part 1 and a brief outline of the preparation of Part 2, with bulletin no.3 being published shortly.

He concluded by stating that the Plan had been produced remarkably quickly given the numerous recent changes to national planning policy. The council was ahead of most south-eastern local planning authorities in the process of getting Part 1 adopted. .

RESOLVED: to

(1)  note the report;

(2)  request the Cabinet member to take the committee’s comments into account.

(3)  request that future planning policy projects are costed separately.