New Local Plan to be submitted for examination

Harborough District Council decided, at its Full Council meeting on 5 March 2018, that its new Local Plan should be submitted to a Government planning inspector.

Once it is adopted, the new Local Plan will set out planning policies in the Harborough district up to 2031. It will make sure development meets strategic priorities for housing, employment, community facilities, transport and other infrastructure needed to support development.

Councillor Phil King, Deputy Leader and Portfolio holder for Planning, told Councillors that whist he accepted that not everyone will agree or like every part of the draft plan, the time had now arrived for it to be submitted to the planning inspectorate without any more delay. 

He said: “By supporting the submission debates, for and against particular policies, can now be tested and agreed to by the independent planning inspector.”

In September 2017, a public consultation on the ‘soundness’ of the proposed Local Plan saw more than 2,000 representations received, from 430 individuals or organisations. It was considered that those responses received from the public did not raise any issues of soundness that cannot be resolved during the Local Plan Examination.

Once the Local Plan is submitted to the planning inspector a number of hearing sessions may be held to consider it further, before a report is prepared into whether it is ‘sound’.

The Local Plan is expected to be finalised and ‘adopted’ before the end of 2018.