Winchester City Council cabinet approve local housing plan
But it might need to be redrafted, due to new Government reforms
Winchester should now be able to move forward with housebuilding across the district ‘at pace’ after a blueprint for thousands of new homes was backed by council leaders.
The city council is pressing ahead with the local plan which will run until 2040, but due to changes brought forward by the new Labour government, will need to immediately start updating it again.
Winchester City Council has brought forward council meetings from September to approve the plan so it can be put out for public consultation – outlining where they'd like to see new homes built over the next 16 years.
If agreed at a full council meeting on August 28th, the six-week public consultation will start on August 29th before the plan can be approved by the national Planning Inspectorate.
It should then be used as the master plan from early next year.
By then, the individual local authority house building target from the government should be finalised – with Labour saying it wants more than 300,000 houses built nationally per year.
The council will have 18 months to confirm a revised local plan, using this one as a foundation.
It is expected there will be over a 60% rise in the house build targets for Winchester District going from 676 to 1,099.
The local plan includes sites for housing that are currently being built, have planning permission, or are existing local plan allocations, including Kings Barton.
Housing development will be divided into three areas. Some 5,670 homes could be provided in Winchester city, including 900 at Sir John Moore Barracks, 5,700 in the South Hampshire urban area including 190 at new sites at Whiteley, and 4,250 in the market towns and rural areas including potentially 100 homes in Bishop’s Waltham.
The reason given to continue with the plan is to ensure that there was something in place while the new local plan was worked out, otherwise planning applications would not have a benchmark for approval.
Councillor Lucile Thompson (Lib Dem, St. Paul) said she supported moving forward with the draft plan because it would stop developers coming in and doing what they wanted without the council being able to challenge those plans.
Planning applications need to be consistent with national policy and avoid being approved with the horrors of appeal, said the leader.
Councillor Kelsie Lerney (Lib Dem, St Barnabas) said the last local plan was set in 2013, so is now 11 years out of date.
She said it is not just about housing but the place that residents want Winchester to be going forward, adding: “There are 68 policies outside of housing and housing allocation. Including policies which will lead to building homes that are more energy efficient, cheaper to run with access to more green spaces.”
Councillor Thompson said: “It has taken us three years to get to this point.”
She added: “I have lost count how many, with the government of the day throwing up new policies to consider.”
She agreed that it was important to get the local plan in place so there was something to work with to allow house building to “move ahead at pace”.
Retired solicitor Patrick Davies, speaking at a cabinet meeting about the plan this week, said he did not agree with approving the plan and it was misleading the public.
Slamming the council, he said: “This rush is very disgraceful.”
It was agreed that an amendment to the introductory paragraph in the policy document making clear to the public would solve the issue of clarity and Liberal Democrat leader Councillor Martin Todd said calling it misleading was “rubbish”.