Comment

Local Development Plans: an update

All 11 councils have published their Preferred Options Paper, with four councils having also reached the draft Plan Strategy consultation stage, namely Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council, Belfast City Council, Fermanagh & Omagh District Council and Mid Ulster District Council.

While a number of council’s have experienced delays, looking ahead we expect that the following draft Plan Strategies will be published for consultation before the end of 2019:

• Mid & East Antrim
• Derry City & Strabane
• Lisburn City & Castlereagh

Turley Observations

As the draft Plan Strategies emerge we are starting to identify a number of trends across councils:

• The inclusion of an affordable housing policy, albeit with different thresholds applied.
• The introduction of localised housing policies, specifically relating to rural housing, density and housing mix which will introduce different requirements for development between council areas e.g. building height policies.
• Maintaining the status quo on many environmental policies combined with the introduction of tighter restrictions on mineral and renewable development within rural areas.
• Inconsistency between evidence and proposed policies could undermine some emerging plans as has been the case in England and Wales.
• Concerns raised by statutory consultees which could cause problems at Independent Examination stage.
• In its oversight role, the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), has raised concerns about the evidence base supporting policies and conflicts with the Strategic Planning Policy Statement (SPPS).
• We estimate that the average time taken to prepare and adopt both the Plan Strategy and the Local Policies Plan has doubled from four and a half years to nearly nine years.
• Uncertainty around the new process and understanding of the level of evidence required to support the adoption of the local development is causing delay.
• Errors in the process, particularly relating to consultation and public advertisements, have also resulted in unnecessary delays to the process in some cases.

What Next?

• Be prepared and be sure to engage in the process.
• Start to think about you and/or your clients’ interests and build the case to support their aspirations. This will be important in making representations to the plan.

Please contact Angela Wiggam or Emma Walker for more information.

The Indicative Timeline for Local Development Plans is available to download below.

2 July 2019