In our new Local Plan we want to deliver new homes and jobs for each of our rural communities to support sustainable growth that is appropriate, justified and consistent with national policy.
To do this we need to set out a strategy for growth in appropriate rural villages and settlements which will lead to allocations for 5 or more homes, employment or other uses in each place.
This will create certainty around where we want to promote growth and change to help meet our needs for homes, jobs and infrastructure. This plan-led growth is referred to as Pathway 2 in our Phase 2 consultation.
We consider that this is necessary in order to ensure that we: plan positively to reduce the prospect of speculative developments, allocate sufficient land to maintain our 5 year housing land supply, facilitate new affordable, market and specialist homes across in rural communities, and support existing services and facilities. You can read more about why we want to prepare a strategy for plan-led growth in our rural villages and settlement in our phase 2 document here.
The first step in setting out a strategy for rural growth and change is deciding which villages and settlements to investigate. The map you will see shows the rural villages and settlements which have been included on our initial list for further investigation.
We now want to ask you whether you agree that these are the correct rural villages and settlements for plan led growth?
To be clear, at this stage no final decisions have yet been made about the initial list of villages and settlements as there are a number of important issues that will need to be considered, as we continue to prepare our new Local Plan and new information becomes available.
The map shows the villages and settlements that are included in our Phase 2 initial list of villages and settlements to investigate for plan-led growth here.
We are asking you if you agree with the villages and settlements we propose to investigate for local plan led growth and allocations shown on the map?
Click on the map below to get started.
Each symbol represents one of the rural villages and settlements identified on the list of villages and settlements to investigate for plan led growth.
You can click on a village/ settlement and it will display its name and the option to provide your comments on whether you consider it should form part of our strategy for plan led growth in rural areas.
To support us in developing a strategy for growth, we have undertaken some technical work to inform our thinking about which villages and settlements might be appropriate to consider for growth through this pathway. This work has up to this stage focussed around a number of key themes such as: accessibility; an audit of facilities and services; and evidence of existing planning designations, including environmental and historic environment constraints, and agricultural land.
The rationale and methodology which led to this initial list can be viewed in the technical evidence paper.
Through the next consultation, we will seek to: