A local plan controls where developments go and how much can be built. Shropshire’s new local plan has now been summarily rejected by the planning inspectorate. This leaves Shropshire unprotected. Developers now have much more freedom to pick and choose where they put houses.
Of all the disastrous consequences of Conservative rule of Shropshire in recent years, this perhaps the most incompetent and hardest to recover from. It will probably take two years for a new plan to be put in place. Unlike the plan that has just collapsed, it will have to take on the Labour government’s new housing targets. Our county builds more than current targets. It is fantasy to think developers want to build the 1,994 homes a year in Shropshire the government is demanding. The only way that will happen is if we allow uncontrolled development on green fields. Around Ludlow. Around everywhere else.
The county’s ambitions for economic growth, to provide decent housing and to protect and enhance the environment depend on the local plan. If it is not up to date, national planning rules override local rules. Developers rub their hands with glee and target the green fields we love rather than develop the redundant and disused brownfield sites that should be developed before any farming land is consumed.
Why has this occurred?
Shropshire council first produced a local plan in two parts, known as the Core Strategy and SAMDev, within five years from 2009 to 2014. As planning goes it was reasonably consensual with a broad agreement that Rural Rebalance was the right strategy. This concentrated development in the market towns and allowed sufficient development in villages to encourage them to survive and thrive. Broadly, this worked although there have been many planning battles between residents and developers that disagreed.
Local plans need to be reviewed and replaced regularly. Shropshire Council started the second plan in 2016 and councillors approved the full plan in December 2020. But the plan was only submitted to the planning inspectorate in September 2021. Formal hearings began the next July. Four years later, after the process stalled, the council wanted the hearings to resume. The planning inspectorate said no. After nine years, even though rules for such plans have been simplified, the new local plan is on the scrapheap.
The planning inspectors’ letter is one of the most critical I have seen in decades. It pulls no punches.
- The modifications required to the draft plan are not “limited” as the council claims, they are “significant”
- There is more work involved than the council says and its timetable is “overly ambitious” and the council has not recognised how much work is involved and timescales are “unrealistic”
- The council has seriously underestimated the time needed to assess new sites in the green belt, talking to other parties about the infrastructure needed for new development and assess whether the new sites are viable for development and on what timetable.
- This cannot be achieved in the six months allocated
- The examination of the plan has gone on for three years, the council’s approach will only “serve to protract the process further”.
In a final blow, the inspectors say: “The combination of these factors leaves us unable to apply our discretion in this case to allow the examination to continue.”
Shropshire Council had no choice but to withdraw the plan. If it had not done so, the planning inspectorate would have rejected the plan as “unsound”.
Let’s be clear. This did not need to happen. It has only happened to a few other councils. The problem is that the local plan has been in the Conservative leadership’s peripheral vision. Several cabinet members have been responsible for the local plan but the portfolio holder was always loaded with too much other stuff. The bigger issue was that the council did not provide enough staff. For the first plan it around nine staff. For the failed plan it had around three staff. The new plan was destined to fail but the council leadership could not see this.
This will have a devasting impact on Shropshire. New targets for 20% affordable housing have been scrapped and we will build fewer affordable homes. The housing crisis will continue while developers target green fields and the green belt, not where housing is needed for our communities.
As a result of this debacle, this council leadership will be remembered as the most incompetent in Shropshire’s history.
Understanding local plans
Local plans have an inbuilt tension. Their task is both to permit development and restrict it. Permit where housing, employment and retail development should go. Where open space should be. Play areas. Flooding mitigation. Protection of open fields.
The National Planning Policy Framework begins with a presumption in favour of sustainable development. If a development is sustainable, it should not usually be refused. That’s fine in principle and even green leaning groups supported it when the NPPF was first drafted in 2012. I did. What we didn’t see coming has that this would be linked to the requirement a five-year land supply for housing. If the planning authority cannot identify a stream of sites that are expected to begin development within five years, the local plan is effectively suspended. If the development is sustainable, which is capable of a wide range of interpretations, it is very hard for a council to refuse and any refusal has a high risk of being overturned by the planning inspectorate.
Shropshire Council no longer has a five-year land supply. It will be hard to resist anything anywhere. This is a catastropic failure by the current council.
I remember SAMDev – on the parish council. There are still ridiculous restrictions in place And it ends up with green fields being preferred over brown fields. I am alluding to one potential brown field site close to home. But there is also the question of infrastructure; whether it exists or whether brown field development might be more expensive that green field; and are the buses, schools, shops, doctors there to support it?
Not enough staff, 9 to 3 – that will be what happens when there is a major focus on voluntary and compulsory redundancies and recruitment freezes, with existing staff not having the capacity to fill the gaps
Perhaps our town and parish councils should do more for once? Or perhaps we should move away from unitary council.