Councillors to consider draft Local Plan for public consultation
Councillors at St Albans City and District Council will meet on Monday 23 September to consider the draft Local Plan and whether it should go forward for the technical consultation, known as Regulation 19 Publication, later in September.
Should this be approved by the Council’s Planning Policy and Climate Committee on Monday, there will be a six-week consultation period to ask stakeholders and local people for their views on whether the Plan complies with the relevant legal requirements and is ‘sound’ in planning terms. Full Council will also consider the draft Local Plan contents for approval at its meeting in October.
Local Plans, which all councils are required to have, set out the policies underpinning development and the sites where future homes and infrastructure for transport, schools, businesses, health facilities and parks are permitted over periods spanning two decades or more. They help protect against speculative applications by ensuring development can be managed in a planned and legally robust manner, and set out where development can take place, and importantly, where it cannot.
Chris Traill, Strategic Director for Community and Place Delivery at the Council said: “Proposed changes to the government’s National Planning Policy Framework have led the Council to bring forward its timetable to ensure we can get our Local Plan in place in a timely way, following years of work and research.
“Our current Local Plan dates from 1994 and is the second oldest in England. Having our new Local Plan in place will ensure that the types of homes and infrastructure most needed locally can be brought forward. We will also be better able to protect sites where most potential harm from development would be caused.
“Ad hoc large-scale planning applications that come forward in an unplanned way mean we have less power to require the necessary infrastructure we need to support new developments. Having a new Local Plan in place, on the other hand, will mean infrastructure can be properly planned for the developments we need, and that high standards of sustainability can be built into all of them.”
The draft Local Plan will identify sites for future long-term development which, as things stand, include 9 new primary schools, 4 new secondary schools, plus sites for 15,000 new homes, including social housing, locations for 15,000 jobs, and new parks.
The Planning Policy and Climate Committee meeting on 23 September starts at 7pm and will be webcast. Details, and papers for the meeting that committee members will be considering setting out the proposed draft Local Plan for publication, can be found at: stalbans.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=615&MId=10958.
[See also. Council speeds up its Local Plan process.]
Contact for the press:
John McJannet, Principal Communications Officer, St Albans City and District Council, john.mcjannet@stalbans.gov.uk