Councils like Wokingham are required to publish a local plan to manage the process of development; it protects the borough against inappropriate new building and provides a planned approach to delivering the new housing mandated by central government. A plan also helps to ensure the infrastructure is to be provided at the level required to support new development.
Wokingham Borough Council’s proposed local plan sets out a clear strategy to deliver a vision of thriving, green, and inclusive communities.
The strategy for locating development is based on that proposed in the draft local plan, drawn up under the previous administration, reinforced by further assessment and evidence gathering.
Preparation has involved engagement with statutory bodies and neighbouring local authorities and has had careful regard to the matters raised by town and parish councils, residents and businesses.
While the plan owes much to past draft proposals, it has some important new policy features. These push the boundaries further than before, as with our new higher targets for much-needed affordable housing and the new cutting-edge energy efficiency and environmental standards that we will be requiring developers to meet.
All local plans involve difficult choices. I understand why people living near proposed development sites may feel unhappy. But the council has a duty to positively plan for development and in doing so protect the borough from unplanned and speculative proposals. We can do that only by having an up-to-date plan that allocates enough land for the new housing required to be built by government.
Unplanned or speculative development often comes with inadequate infrastructure. Our aim in the new plan is to deliver the infrastructure required to sustain population growth and to help build sustainable and healthy new communities.
Infrastructure is secured more easily through large developments and the new local plan will include a major development location which will meet a significant portion of the new housing requirement and require developer contributions for improved educational provision, a significant number of affordable homes for people otherwise priced out of the market, leisure and recreational facilities, highways improvements, biodiversity net gain, and even improvements to flood resistance.
Medium-sized and smaller sites throughout the borough will ensure that new housing can be delivered at a more even pace through the plan period.
The new local plan also sets out to preserve other areas of the borough from inappropriate development. It identifies significant new areas of countryside as valued landscapes and new sites of urban landscape importance within settlements. It also designates over a hundred Local Green Spaces, which have a level of protection analogous to the Green Belt in open countryside.
I want to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in preparing the plan, especially our planning officers, but also my predecessors as executive members for Planning and the Local Plan, Lindsay Ferris, and, in the previous administration, Wayne Smith.
By having a new local plan in place, we enable the better management of development and can prepare for the future in a considered and orderly way.
Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council
