Two recent events have now made securing a Neighbourhood Plan for both Whittington and West Felton parishes critically important to ensuring local communities have a proper say in local development. A Neighbourhood Plan puts local communities back in charge of local planning policy. This is very important given the push in recent years to speed up the planning process. A Neighbourhood plan allows us to shape the growth of our communities in a way that we want and based on local need.
1 Draft Local Plan is unsound!
Planning inspectors have found that Conservative-run Shropshire Council’s Draft Local Plan is unsound. I expected this to happen before it was submitted for inspection.
It is vital to reflect on what that means for communities across Shropshire. This is bad news for Shropshire residents because:
Current Planning Policy will Expire in 2026.
The current version of the local plan expires in 2026. If that happens without new policies in place, particularly around land supply, then local communities are exposed to inappropriate development. Without a 5-year land supply, developers get the upper hand and can have a field day, exploiting the policy gap to get permission for development, which wouldn’t have succeeded otherwise. This means an open season for developers to get permission where they want rather than where plan policies dictate. Conservative-run Shropshire Council already has form for being caught with their pants down without a 5-year land supply. This led to many planning applications being won at appeal or allowed without much defence, including locally.
Starting over in any degree is expensive.
Shropshire Council is under resourced in both finances and manpower. The Local Plan review has stretched staff to the extreme which had knock-on consequences in other service areas while the review was underway. Now that the plan is unsound, a costly redraft must address the Planning Inspector’s concerns before it can be approved. This will take quite some time. As yet, the Inspectors haven’t explained how it is unsound after several weeks. There letter was sent to Shropshire Council on the 29th of October That must hint at a large amount of disagreement between the Inspectors and Shropshire Council. Certainly there was a lot of evidence during the hearings that showed the plan was poorly conceived and excecuted. The more comprehensive the slating of the plan the longer it will take to get right. Shropshire Lib Dems tried to delay the plan submission to allow time to fix many issues. Conservatives ploughed on regardless.
2 New Government Housing Targets doubled for Shropshire
The new Labour Government’s targets for Shropshire Council are significantly higher than the previous Conservative Government’s. The annual housing target has been bumped up from 1,070 to 1,994 homes a year. Everybody agrees that there is a supply problem but I have discussed the reasons for the housing crisis before: Top 10 reasons why we have a housing crisis. Numbers aren’t the only reason.
Both Labour and the Conservative before them created as massive problem for Shropshire.
Planning in Shropshire is developer-led. Sites that come forward for development are put forward by developers and property owners. This process isn’t based on what a community needs or where it is needed. This creates a chaotic responsive planning process. If the process was plan-led with proper strategic town planning taking place to meet local need, we would have better development and supporting infrastructure. Instead Shropshire Planning is piecemeal and rudderless.
There are genuine issues around supply but Shropshire Council has no desire to make sure the right homes are built in the right places. Consultations around need have largely been ignored in the current local plan review process. Both Labour and the Conservatives have a desire to speed up planning decisions and get more housing built to address supply issues. This is welcome. What isn’t so welcome is local communities being side-lined. I want our communities to have a stronger voice. That means a stronger voice in setting the planning framework long before planning applications are submitted. In general, if you aren’t happy with a development when an application is submitted, it is far too late to make a difference. Speed comes at a cost. Shropshire Council is very poorly equipped to cope with speed. So in the current climate they will be compelled to take drastic rapid decisions without safeguarding local need.
Following Shropshire Council’s Strategic Land Availability Assessment (SLAA) in 2014 & 2018 for the current local plan review, many sites were submitted for inclusion but weren’t included in the draft plan. Many of those sites were rated as land with ‘long-term housing potential’. The list grew considerably in 2018. See Residential Conclusion Map. The risk the increased housing target now poses is that many of the long-term sites get added to the draft local plan, and the public will have little to no say on that. The public had no say in the assessment of sites in the SLAA.
The dire state of Shropshire Council’s finances, the lack of staffing resources to rapidly update the draft plan, and the perilous state of the draft Local Plan, is a compound problem. There is a very real risk of sites getting into the local plan which are detrimental to their communities without the supporting infrastructure (school places, drainage, utilities, etc.) development needs. Locally we have already been hit by poor planning choices resulting in homes being built without the supporting infrastructure.
Neighbourhood Plans can help communities defend themselves from inappropriate development
In the looming policy vacuum there will be a big risk that poorly planning housing gets built in the wrong place that doesn’t reflect local need. Neighbourhood Plans give control of local planning back to communities. Allowing them to set the local planning framework for future development.
A Neighbourhood Plan will allow a community to:
- Decide where development should happen
- Decide what type of development is needed
- More powers to influence the design of development
- Create or protect green spaces
- Define and protect what makes our area special
- Claim a higher rate of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) from developers
- Ensure more CIL is spent locally to support growth
(25% of CIL allocated locally by Shropshire Council instead of 15% without a Neighbourhood Plan) - Give local choices real planning weight that Shropshire Council must follow
A Neighbourhood Plan reverses the planning process. The planning framework becomes bottom-up not top down. Local policies need to fit with Shropshire’s Local Plan and the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). At present policy is shaped by the Government and Shropshire Council and driven by developers and land owners. However, a Neighbourhood Plan gives power back to our communities to shape that development.
While all the planning system is in turmoil at Shropshire Council a Neighbourhood Plan ensures certainty and continuity locally and I believe is need now more than ever. I am determined to see this rolled out in West Felton and Whittington and to put our communities back in control of planning locally.
