YOUR correspondents are right to be concerned about the number of potential speculative planning applications made in non-green belt areas like Thornbury, Falfield, and Charfield.
South Gloucestershire Council has a Core Strategy which was subject to an examination in public by a planning inspector, who then concluded it was ‘sound’; the council then adopted it in 2013.
The Core Strategy was for planned housing development, taking into account infrastructure, covering the period from 2006 up to 2026.
Through the Core Strategy the council has planned for nearly 1,000 new homes to come forward at Thornbury including the Park Farm and Thornbury Fields sites, but agreed with the inspector that further large scale development at Thornbury and in places like Charfield, Falfield would be unsustainable.
Across South Gloucestershire not only do we have the Core Strategy with housing sites identified for over 28,000 new houses, of which just under some 6,000 have been built since 2006, but there are also some 10,000 homes with planning permission available for the sector to build. So why are so many speculative application now coming in on sites that were not identified in the Core Strategy?
For the Core Strategy to remain water tight and free from challenge by speculative planning applications the council must also prove that the area has a five-year land supply – land ready to develop over the next five years.
Landowners and developers have been slow in bringing the sites identified within the Core Strategy forward for development.
Because of this we cannot at present prove a five-year land supply and therefore struggle to fend off speculative planning applications.
We raised this issue during our devolution discussions with the secretary of state and have written to the planning minister asking him to visit South Gloucestershire to see for himself how this failure of housing delivery is affecting our Core Strategy and ability to deliver the sustainable homes through the plan-led system that are needed in South Gloucestershire.
Cllr Colin Hunt
Chairman of planning, transport and strategic environment committee
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