In the ideal world of planning for new housing, we are supposed to identify areas for new housing within our neighbourhood plan. At the same time, if the current settlement boundary needs to be changed that is the time to be re-setting it. We are all then supposed to vote on that plan before it is then approved by Wiltshire Council.
The overall neighbourhood plan (there are several parish councils working on this together) began on 27 June 2012 and our parish council has been working on Purton’s neighbourhood plan ever since. Sadly, there are barely any outcomes to show for those two years, despite regular offers of help to the parish council.
Wiltshire Council has put forward a core strategy to demonstrate how it will provide for houses (an additional 37 000 houses) employment and much more for the next twenty years or so. This strategy was examined by a government-appointed planning inspector. He considered that an additional 5000 houses were warranted and that all the settlement boundaries (the boundary within which nearly all houses are built) should be re-assessed.
Wiltshire Council has just come out for a six-week consultation on potential housing allocations and invited calls for all landowners, and developers with options on land, to submit proposals for where housing should go. The developers will now also call for enlargement of the settlement boundaries (to encompass their land banks).
The absence of our approved neighbourhood plan is nothing short of a disaster.
Although we now need to email the Wiltshire Council with our own suggestions, without our neighbourhood plan there will be no agreed consensus. There is little guidance in the parish plan because it was supposed to be done by the neighbourhood plan. The only current document that considers the main possible housing sites in Purton and analyses them thoroughly is Transforming Purton Parish Foresight & Resilience 2013.
More to follow …
