Local Plan Refresh – BDC Wants to Hear From You!
There a requirement to update Local Plans after 5 years. In March it was agreed to undertake a refresh whilst agreeing it would be tight to complete by end of June 2025. There is already a hint of the new Government that they expect local authorities to have a Local Plan in place. The call for sites ended recently and officers are now assessing the sites put forward. A community engagement exercise is underway and responses are required by 16th August 2024. It is a very informal way for anyone to feed back what they would like to see in a refreshed local plan; for example, this would include housing, affordable housing, retail, leisure, open spaces and business opportunities. It is very easy to send an email to the planning policy team with ideas and thoughts. There will be a meeting of the Local Plan SubCommittee (not discussing sites) to provide an update. The work discussing sites will start in September and continue through October in a number of additional meetings. The Regulation 18, 6 week public consultation will start in November and end towards end of December 2024. The feedback from the consultation will be collated during January and February 2025 with further meetings of the LP SubCommittee taking place through to April 2025. The final Regulation 19, 6 week consultation follows in April and May on the draft plan and this will be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for England by 30th June.
NB: The site submissions are not allocations. Not all sites received during this exercise are automatically marked for development, nor do they gain any special status. Every site is now being assessed to determine whether they are suitable, available and achievable for development or designation within the updated Local Plan.
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