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Tewkesbury Civic SocietyProtecting Tewkesbury's Architectural Heritage and ensuring today's developments add positively to it.
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Policies
TEWKESBURY BOROUGH PLAN
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District councils and unitary councils are responsible for writing most local planning policies, and for making decisions on most planning applications. In particular they write the local plan, which forms a major part of the development plan for their area. Planning applications should conform to unless there are good reasons otherwise.
Whilst the Joint Core Strategy identifies larger sites (Strategic Allocations) for housing and employment, and deals with important issues such as Green Belt, flooding and transport, the Tewkesbury Borough Plan will identify the additional specific locations for potential smaller-scale growth (i.e. housing - below 500 units) and set out how protection of our key assets, such as our valuable countryside, our historic heritage and our open spaces is to be achieved. These smaller potential development sites are in so called Rural Service Centres (Winchcombe and Bishops Cleve) and twelve Service Villages, (the nearest being Combe Hill and Twyning) and in Tewkesbury itself, see ISSUES/HOUSING SITES CLOSE TO TOWN. |
Policies need to be up to date to be useful in guiding planning decisions. The adopted Tewkesbury Borough Local Plan covered the period 1991-2011. While most of these policies were ‘saved’ (i.e. they are still legally capable of being used in decision making until a new plan is adopted) it needs to be replaced by a plan that takes into account changes in local and national circumstances.
The draft “new” Tewkesbury Borough Plan was put before us for consultation in the Spring of 2015 and the original schedule was to have it submitted to the Secretary of State by Spring 2016 with subsequent examination then adoption in Summer 2016.
However, the delay in the JCS schedule has had a “knock-on” effect on the Borough Plan and submission was then scheduled in 2019 but finally submitted for inspection on 18/5/2020.
See here.
The draft “new” Tewkesbury Borough Plan was put before us for consultation in the Spring of 2015 and the original schedule was to have it submitted to the Secretary of State by Spring 2016 with subsequent examination then adoption in Summer 2016.
However, the delay in the JCS schedule has had a “knock-on” effect on the Borough Plan and submission was then scheduled in 2019 but finally submitted for inspection on 18/5/2020.
See here.
More detail can be found on TBC’s website here.
In a post hearings letter (see HERE) the Inspector identified a series of required Main Modifications that needed TBC responses and consultation before the Plan might be declared “sound” so adoption is now expected in 2022, probably after the local elections with the associated purdah period.
Work started on the Borough Plan back in 2013 with a “scoping” exercise and then a draft in 2015, so it has been seven to nine years in development. This is not untypical. We assume that these timescales are one of the reasons why the Government is proposing in its shake up of the Planning System that no Plan shall be more than 30 months in the making!
It is the Governments proposal that any Local Plan should be greatly simplified and reduced to perhaps one third of its present size, so who knows, we may be in for a frenzy of editing even after adoption!
Hitherto without an adopted JCS and Borough (Local) Plan, Tewkesbury has been very vulnerable to “opportunistic” planning applications for housing development in areas unassigned in the emerging plans, an application submitted at the Mythe is a case in question (see ISSUES/HOUSING SITES CLOSE TO TOWN). Even with an adopted JCS we still have no adopted Borough Plan yet so remain more vulnerable than we will be when it is adopted.
Even with an adopted JCS and Borough Plan, applications for development may be made for sites not identified in either. They will be considered on merit and as affected by all pertinent policies as well as their fit within adopted plans. If the Borough refuses then the chance of that being overturned on appeal are greatly reduced with adopted plans.
In a post hearings letter (see HERE) the Inspector identified a series of required Main Modifications that needed TBC responses and consultation before the Plan might be declared “sound” so adoption is now expected in 2022, probably after the local elections with the associated purdah period.
Work started on the Borough Plan back in 2013 with a “scoping” exercise and then a draft in 2015, so it has been seven to nine years in development. This is not untypical. We assume that these timescales are one of the reasons why the Government is proposing in its shake up of the Planning System that no Plan shall be more than 30 months in the making!
It is the Governments proposal that any Local Plan should be greatly simplified and reduced to perhaps one third of its present size, so who knows, we may be in for a frenzy of editing even after adoption!
Hitherto without an adopted JCS and Borough (Local) Plan, Tewkesbury has been very vulnerable to “opportunistic” planning applications for housing development in areas unassigned in the emerging plans, an application submitted at the Mythe is a case in question (see ISSUES/HOUSING SITES CLOSE TO TOWN). Even with an adopted JCS we still have no adopted Borough Plan yet so remain more vulnerable than we will be when it is adopted.
Even with an adopted JCS and Borough Plan, applications for development may be made for sites not identified in either. They will be considered on merit and as affected by all pertinent policies as well as their fit within adopted plans. If the Borough refuses then the chance of that being overturned on appeal are greatly reduced with adopted plans.
