Agenda item

The Director of Planning, Housing and Environmental Health indicated that the forthcoming Local Plan was a significant document for the Borough Council in identifying and outlining future development for Tonbridge and Malling for the coming years. 

Members were advised that a period of public consultation on the Local Plan was expected to start on Friday 30 September 2016 for an eight week period.  The closing date was 25 November and this was longer than the minimum statutory consultation period of six weeks.

The main focus of the consultation would be a revised Way Forward document, including an executive summary and map of the potential development strategy; the Sustainability Appraisal Scoping and the Habitat Regulations Assessment reports and an electronic survey setting out 15 set questions to provide consultees with a structure for responding.   All of this material could be viewed on the website once the consultation opened and hard copies would be available at the two main Council offices and libraries.    In addition, hard copies would be made available for local organisations.

All Members of the Forum were encouraged to work with their local communities to raise awareness of the Local Plan consultation period and to respond by the November deadline.

There would also be a small number of manned exhibitions around the Borough during the consultation period although the number and duration would have to reflect the limited resources available to the Local Plan team during this busy stage of plan making.

It was also confirmed that traditional methods of promotion and communication would be used in conjunction with the use of social media and the internet.

Following the consultation a revised plan would be prepared to reflect the comments received before submission to Government sometime in 2017.  There would be further opportunity for local involvement and contribution as the process continued.

In response to a question from the Forum regarding the scope of the Plan, the Director of Planning, Housing and Environmental Health indicated that currently it dealt with headline development strategy and policies around use of land; protection of the countryside and infrastructure.

Finally, in response to a further question regarding planning policy until the Plan was implemented in 2018, the Policy Manager advised that the Local Development Framework remained extant until the Local Plan was ratified.  The Director of Planning, Housing and Environmental Health was also pleased to report that the Borough Council had an estimated five year supply of housing development available.  However, it was important to take some challenging decisions for the longer term.

Members were pleased to see consideration being given to mixed types of housing and asked whether consideration would also be given to community spaces and local shopping.  It was confirmed that both of these areas would be referred to in the Plan and that the Borough Council tried to promote the scale of development should be right for the size of the community.

The Chairman closed the discussion by asking all Members to promote the consultation with their local community groups.