Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Buckinghamshire local plan re-drafted to include 'garden town' allocation and thousands of additional homes

15 Jun 2016, 10:39 am

A Buckinghamshire council which withdrew its local plan from examination in 2014 has produced a new draft plan proposing the delivery of more than twice as many homes as it previously put forward.

Aylesbury Vale District Council withdrew the Vale of Aylesbury Plan from examination in February 2014, after examining inspector Kevin Ward said the document did not provide for enough homes and the council had failed in its duty to co-operate with neighbouring local planning authorities in the production of the plan.

A committee of the Council met on Monday to discuss a new draft Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan (VALP) (221-page / 4 MB PDF). Whilst the withdrawn plan identified a local need for 13,850 new homes by 2031, the VALP proposes the delivery of 21,300 new homes by 2033 to meet Aylesbury Vale's needs and up to another 12,000 homes to address the unmet need of neighbouring councils to the south.

The strategy outlined in the draft VALP includes the expansion of Aylesbury into a 'garden town', with more than 14,000 new homes to be delivered on previously-developed sites and "integrated sustainable urban extensions on greenfield sites around the town".

The towns of Buckingham, Haddenham and Winslow are each intended to accommodate housing growth of 50% under the draft plan. More limited growth of 22% is proposed in the market town of Wendover, which is bounded by green belt land and an Area of Outstanding National Beauty.

The council considers that exceptional circumstances exist justifying a proposed alteration to the green belt boundary to release a site for around 800 homes to the north of Wendover. The draft VALP also includes plans for a new settlement of around 4,500 homes, which is expected to be located in Haddenham or Winslow.

Planning expert Lucy Close of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "Housing numbers and release from the green belt are hot topics at the moment, especially following the holding notice issued by Greg Clark at the end of May suspending the adoption of the Birmingham Local Plan. Following the issue of Department for Communities and Local Government’s prospectus (18-page / 521 KB PDF) in March of this year in relation garden towns and villages, it is clear that the Government supports and is encouraging such development and this may have influenced the decision to support a large new settlement. We will wait to see to see the responses to the draft local plan and in particular the reaction to the alteration of the green belt boundary as this is always a controversial topic in local terms."

The Council intends to submit the VALP for examination in March 2017 and hopes to adopt it in mid-2017.