Decision details

The purpose of this report was to enable Cabinet to consider the proposal to commence preparation of a Local Plan for Peterborough and, if it was agreed a new Local Plan should be produced, seek Cabinet’s recommendation to Full Council to approve an updated Local Development Scheme (LDS) which outlined the timetable for preparing the Local Plan.

Cabinet considered the report and RESOLVED to recommend Council:

1.    Authorises officers to commence a review of the Local Plan; and

2.    Approves the attached Local Development Scheme (LDS), which sets out a timetable for the production of a new Local Plan, and brings it into effect from 26 January 2023.

It is recommended a Local Plan be commenced for the following reasons:

(i)    To ensure that new development continues to take place in planned locations and help demonstration of a ‘5 year housing land supply’ (a Government requirement), reducing the risk of challenge from speculative, unplanned development.

(ii)  An opportunity to identify new locations for growth in Peterborough, which in turn will meet our longer term housing and employment needs.

(iii) Identification of additional range and choice of employment sites to accommodate increasing commercial demand. This will generate wealth, and improve local people’s life chances by providing increased employment opportunities. There is evidence to suggest that the supply of employment land is tight, and a significant proportion of allocated employment land either has planning permission, is under construction, or has already been built out.

(iv) Align preparation of a new Local Plan with the review of other corporate strategies.

(v)  Continued and potentially additional income via, business rate growth and council tax income.

The following alternative options were considered and rejected:

·         An alternative timetable (LDS) was considered which only included one round of public consultation on a Draft Plan (Regulation 18) compared to the two stages shown at Appendix 1. This option was rejected as overall this approach will not reduce the Local Plan timetable. Two rounds of consultation on the draft Plan would allow more opportunity for the parish councils, local developers and the wider community to make comments early in the process.

·         Do nothing and review the situation in 12 months. This option was rejected because it would fail to take advantage of the benefits of commencing a new Local Plan.

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