Cabinet approves sustainable and innovative Local Plan - with public consultation to begin in the autumn

Wiltshire Council's Cabinet has today (Tuesday 11 July) endorsed the Local Plan, so that it can now be considered by Full Council on 18 July, before a public consultation later in the autumn.

The Local Plan will set out the vision and framework for housing, infrastructure and land for employment growth for the next 15 years and is the most important place-shaping document for Wiltshire.

The document has been in development since 2017, and has been through several stages of engagement, consultation and changes based on evidence and the feedback from communities, developers and businesses across Wiltshire.

The revised Plan features increased environmental protections, including a mandate that all houses must be zero carbon, boosting small-scale energy generation such as solar, and increasing biodiversity net gain from 10% to 20%. All new developments must also have cycling and walking connections.

The Plan also requires 40% of all new greenfield housing developments of 10 homes or more to be affordable, with greater flexibility to make it easier to provide affordable housing in villages where there is clearly identified demand, but those developments will still need to be proportionate to the size of a village.

Cllr Nick Botterill, Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning, said: This a ground-breaking Local Plan that far exceeds anything we've done before in terms of sustainability and biodiversity.

Since the last consultation in 2021, we have reassessed the scale of development required and reduced the number of houses to be built until 2038 to ensure that we're not building more homes than we need to.

We have also maximised the number of brownfield sites in the Plan to help protect as much of our countryside as we can.

We recognise that there will be some controversial elements to the Plan. For example, the Plan will allow limited development in small villages, with at least 40% affordable housing to ensure that we can keep young people in the villages they grew up in. Our larger villages will also have a role to play in providing homes for our communities. These homes will be built by 2038, in some cases in accordance with Neighbourhood Plans.

It has taken many years of consultation, evidence gathering and listening to feedback to get to this point, and the Plan will be considered by Full Council next week, before a public consultation in the autumn. The Plan will be examined by an independent Planning Inspector in 2024.

We have committed to an effective Local Plan that delivers sustainable growth for Wiltshire in our Business Plan, and we look forward to giving residents, businesses, communities and other stakeholders the final opportunity to have their say in the public consultation later in the autumn - we'll have more details on how people can get involved soon.

The council will publicise and let communities know of the autumn consultation when the dates are confirmed. Once the public consultation is complete and all comments have been considered, the Plan will be examined by an independent Planning Inspector before it is adopted.

At this final stage, any comments about the Plan during the consultation period must focus on whether the proposed sites meet the 'tests of soundness' and shouldn't focus on whether or not the respondent or a community likes or dislikes a particular site. Any comments that object to proposed sites for reasons other than 'tests of soundness' are unlikely to lead to a change to what is proposed when the Plan is considered by the Planning Inspector.

To read the full Cabinet report, people should go to: https://cms.wiltshire.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=141&MId=14748 (opens new window).