May 2025 – engagement feedback, evidence studies and the call for sites
Tuesday, 13 May 2025
Over the past 12 months we’ve been engaging with residents, town and parish councils, councillors and other key stakeholders to help shape the vision and objectives for the Local Plan.
Thank you to everyone who got involved. Through the workshops and the public surveys, we’ve received a significant amount of valuable feedback that we’re now taking into consideration as we prepare for our first formal stage of engagement (called Regulation 18 or Issues and Options) that will take place in early 2026.
In response to our public survey that closed in September 2024, we received over 12,000 visits to our consultation webpage and approximately 3,500 comments were received. We also received approximately 300 responses to our dedicated youth survey. We’ve prepared a report that summarises the main issues and themes that were raised through the surveys.
We’ve also been working on some evidence studies that will inform the content of the Local Plan:
- Housing and Economic Development Needs Assessment (HEDNA)
- Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment (GTAA)
- Landscape Character Assessment Update
- Strategic Flood Risk Assessment and interactive mapping that shows the location of areas of flood risk
- Settlement Audit
- Grid Capacity Study
- Green Belt Review
- Water Cycle Study
- Sustainability Appraisal
We completed our call for sites in January 2025 and around 650 sites have been suggested to us for homes, industrial uses, green energy and green spaces. We have started assessing the sites to identify those that might be suitable for development, and we expect to complete our assessment and come up with an initial shortlist towards the end of this year. We’ll then need to prepare more evidence studies to help us identify the final list of sites that we think are suitable for development and these will be included in our final Local Plan in autumn 2027.
We have published a list of all the sites that have been submitted to us and an interactive map showing where they are and what use they have been proposed for. We have published all the sites at this early stage as we want everyone to be able to see what has been submitted to us. We aren’t seeking comments on them at this time, as we don’t want people to potentially spend a lot of time objecting to sites that may/may not be assessed to be suitable. There will be opportunities to comment on growth locations and specific sites through our formal consultations in early 2026 and autumn 2027.
We will soon be beginning work to identify whether there are any local green spaces that communities are keen to protect through the Local Plan. We will be working closely with town and parish councils to identify the green spaces that meet the criteria and will seek to publish them as part of the Regulation 18 consultation in early 2026.