Officers at Rutland County Council have recommended to their Members that they withdraw their emerging Local Plan due to it not meeting the NPPF’s criteria for ‘soundness’ by not being ‘effective’.
The Government had awarded the Council a £29.4 million Housing Infrastructure Fund grant to support the development of a new garden community and delivery of new infrastructure at St. George’s Barracks. However, on the 22nd March 2021, the decision was made by the Council to reject the funding, resulting in the Planning Inspector pausing the process of examination.
By rejecting the HIF grant, this opened a viability gap for the scheme, as well as undermining the deliverability of the site. The decision to pause was made in order to ‘avoid wasting time’ and allow the Council to understand the implications of the decision made, as there is no clear understanding of the impact this development could have on the rest of the examination. Monday’s report advises Members to withdraw the emerging plan, as the wider development strategy is undermined due to the significance of the Barracks allocation in the submitted Local Plan.
The NPPF consider plans to be sound if they have met all four of the following; positively prepared, justified, effective and consistent with National Policy. Rutland’s Local Plan is not considered effective without St. Georges Garden Village scheme, thus not meeting the requirements for the plan to be ‘sound’.
Rutland’s current five year housing land supply is 5.2 years and without the plan being adopted, we calculate that this position will fall to approximately 3.67 years. A gap of some 195 homes, with the situation worsening with each year they continue to not have a new Local Plan. Without having five years worth of deliverable housing, this provides land and property owners a window of opportunity to promote and develop land on the edge of towns and villages in the District, which may not have normally been considered as appropriate.
A timeline has been set by the Government to have the new local plan adopted by 2023 otherwise they may be subject to sanctions. The average local plan takes between 3-4 years to prepare and adopt, with the advice being to revert to options and issues stage to help determine an appropriate development strategy. This would ultimately open up a call for sites process, again, providing land and property owners an opportunity to promote their land.
Having no Local Plan brings additional costs for the Council. For example, they will need to appoint new members to the Develop Management and Highways team to determine applications appropriately and negotiate with Highways.
Rutland Council will make the decision as to whether they are going to withdraw the emerging Local Plan on the 1st September.
If you have land or property in Rutland then please contact us for a no obligation assessment of its development potential with a view to maximising its land value during this window of opportunity.
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