Minutes:
“The examination of our borough’s draft Local Plan by the government-appointed inspector has been underway for some time now.
Under the legislation, as I understand it, the ultimate authority to determine whether or not our Local Plan is “sound” lies with the government-appointed inspector, and not with the Council itself.
Given this, would the leader be able to outline the sanctions from central government that this Council could potentially face, if, by the end of the process, we were unable to agree a “sound” Local Plan with the inspector?”
Answer
“It is the role of the examination inspector to decide whether our submitted local plan is ‘sound’ or has been made sound by virtue of modifications. He will inform the Council whether the plan has been found sound by concluding the public examination and writing an Inspector’s Report. It is then a matter for the Council to adopt the plan through the normal CPPP, Cabinet and Full Council decision-making process.
If the inspector concludes that the plan is ‘unsound’ or cannot be made sound, then he will either terminate the examination or issue his Inspector’s Report advising that the plan is unsound and cannot be made sound. It would then be a matter for the Council to decide what to do next – (1) seek to prepare a revised plan that responds to the issues which the inspector judged to be unsound, (2) contemplate a strategic plan in partnership with neighbouring authorities, as is now encouraged by the NPPF or (3) operate under the NPPF policy framework, which includes a standard methodology for calculating housing need and the housing needs test.
In practice the consequence of an unsound plan is that the Council will have to determine its housing requirement using the new NPPF standard methodology and might have to add 20% to its five year housing land supply due to historic under-supply. This means that the Council would have to contemplate the approval of more brownfield and green belt planning applications and can probably expect speculative planning applications for sites that are not currently favoured in the submitted local plan. From November 2020, where delivery falls below 75% of the housing requirement, there would also be a strong presumption in favour of approving all housing applications unless there would be significant and demonstrable adverse impacts.
A number of councils around the country have received warning letters from the Government about their failure to progress a local plan. St Albans were threatened with the prospect of their plan-making powers being transferred to the Government, to the Planning Inspectorate, to consultants appointed on their behalf, or to Herts County Council. This remains a very real threat to Welwyn Hatfield if our Local Plan were to be found unsound.
The Government has also threatened to not pay out the New Homes Bonus on occasions where housing applications are refused by the Council but granted on appeal.
In all cases it is likely that the borough would end up facing a higher housing requirement, speculative planning applications for brownfield and green belt sites, costly planning appeals if they were refused and uncoordinated growth and infrastructure provision, as well as potentially having its plan-making powers transferred to Herts County Council.”
In a supplementary question, Councillor Kasumu asked if it was in our interests to seek cross-party co-operation in our next submission to the Inspector and the Leader agreed that it was.