(Epping Forest District Council) To provide a verbal report on the current position of the new Local Plan for the Epping Forest District.
Minutes:
The Planning Services Director said that the District Council did not have an Adopted Local Plan yet but progress had been made. Following the public hearing sessions for the independent examination of the LP, which had ended in June 2019, the Council had received the Inspector’s advice in August 2019 on alterations required on the soundness of the LP known as major modifications (MMs). The Interim Assistant Director (Planning Policy and Implementation), A Blom-Cooper, was in charge of progressing the Local Plan and the work on the MMs that had been required by the Inspector. The final tranche of the MMs would be submitted next week and consultations on the MMs would be held in October 2020. The Inspector had removed the Jessel Green (Loughton) and Limes Farm (Chigwell) sites from the LP, but no further sites had been added. It was hoped that the LP would be adopted in the early part of next year. A report had been submitted to Cabinet on the draft green infrastructure strategy that supported the policies in the emerging LP. This had been consulted on and was due to be considered by Cabinet with the updates for that final strategy in December 2020. The Council had been required to draft and revise a new Habitats Regulations Assessment as part of the LP. The Council had not been able to issue planning consent for the last two years for applications that involved additional housing. The District Council had reviewed this and was waiting for Natural England and the Conservators of Epping Forest to comment on that draft HRA, which was due to go out to consultation in October 2020.
Referring to the sufficient headroom in the required number of housing units and that some had been taken out in the MMs, Councillor D Wixley asked if this was due to increasing the number of houses on the sites, or had there been other sites in the background that hadn’t been put forward in the first place? The Planning Services Director replied the Council had always ensured that it had produced enough housing. When the Inspector had removed sites, if the Council had found out it was under its allocation and hadn’t had the extra sites this could have caused longer delays and possibly more consultations. Therefore, the Council had safeguarded against having to do all that extra work. There were no new sites, these had all been submitted as part of the Local Plan and was not a case of intensifying housing on the LP sites.
Ongar Parish Councillor M Dadd referred to the Inspector’s letter that had informed EFDC of the projected growth on the ONS (Office of National Statistics) figures for 2018, which was reducing the figures from c11,500 to c6,500, and asked for more information on this. The Planning Services Director replied that EFDC was not looking to reduce the figures but he thought this was to do with the green belt and would have to come back to the Parish Councillor on this, as A Blom-Cooper was the lead officer. This was a letter that had been sent to all green belt authorities and a large number of the EFDC sites were on green belt land because it did not have the space to squeeze even more housing into the existing towns and villages in the District. Councillor Dadd asked if the Inspector had been asking if EFDC needed to have all the green belt sites allocated for housing, now that the projected figure for household growth was 60 per cent of what it had been when EFDC had first done its allocations? The Planning Services Director reiterated that he would have to come back to the Parish Councillor after the meeting as the housing allocation had not changed from 11,400, but rather, why it had not changed. The MMs were still going forward with this figure.
Agreed:
(5) That the Planning Services Director would advise members after the meeting, why EFDC’s housing allocation remained at 11,400 and this had not changed.