7th November 2024
District Plan Examination Hearing Update
Local Plan Inspection
The hearings for stage 1 have now been held, the sessions are available to view using the link to view on this page: District Plan Review - Examination - Mid Sussex District Council .
Overall it is hard to determine what the eventual outcome will be in relation to the District Plan but there are 3 potential options; 1) approve the District Plan, 2) request modifications to the District Plan and then approve and 3) reject the District Plan. Currently, option 2 seems most likely. We will know more once Lousie Nurser, the Local Inspector, has sent her letter (which goes via the relevant government minister first) to Mid Sussex District Council (MSDC) outlining what she wants them to do next. Before this letter can be sent, MSDC need to undertake some work which I have outlined below:
1. As a matter of priority MSDC need to provide evidence to give credence to their narrative that they have complied fully with the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) Duty to Cooperate requirements.
2. MSDC needs to work with National Highways to understand what further work SYSTRA (on behalf of MSDC) need to do and then get to a point of agreement in relation to the transport evidence satisfying National Highways that the mitigations to the safety issues are appropriate.
3. MSDC needs to review all their housing evidence, including site selection and sustainability appraisal, and demonstrate how it has considered unmet need and whether a larger supply of housing could be delivered via another option instead of the supply-led approach taken. A paper is expected on this that would go out for a 10 day consultation period.
MSDC expects to be able to deliver points 1 and 3 above by the end of November and hope to have point 2 completed by Christmas.
The above is not an exhaustive list of the actions for MSDC coming out of the hearings, there are many others, but simply covers the main priorities.
Louise Nurser will produce a second set of Matters, Issues and Questions (MIQs) that will need to be issued 6 weeks prior to any stage 2 hearings.
These timescales are important because in a recent Ministerial Statement inspectors have been advised to ask councils to withdraw their plans if they think the process will take longer than 6 months. Clearly, the timescales are going to be tight for the MSDC District Plan! We need the MSDC District Plan to be approved to help provide protection against the Ansty Farm planning application, which we still expect to go to appeal regardless of the outcome.
Other key points of note that I took from the hearing are:
Figures on the number of houses/people required to make a new settlement sustainable, i.e. with facilities on site, were mentioned for the first time. Ansty Farm site falls very significantly below the numbers suggested.
The inspector confirmed that councils do NOT need to provide a buffer on their housing numbers in addition to meeting unmet need.
The plan is going to be extended to 2040 which means that the oversupply of dwellings is 310 rather than 1042 as the Council had previously stated.
The inspector seemed very keen to explore increased densification of housing.
Working from home patterns whilst not definitive are commonly understood to be at 2 to 3 days per week resulting in reduced pressure on road networks. Interestingly, I don't believe that the Fairfax figures used align with this.
Neighbouring planning authorities confirmed that they did not expect MSDC to meet their unmet needs as they understood the pressures on numbers faced by MSDC too. (There was a figure of 30,000 as unmet need across neighbouring areas over the plan period.)
I hope this summary from the hearings is helpful and I will send on a further update once we know more. For now, the hearings for stage 1 have not changed anything but to give ourselves the best chance to keep Ansty Farm out of the Local Plan and continue to put up a fight against Fairfax, we still are looking to raise up to £100,000 and donations are still very much welcomed (donations can be made via our DONATE page or by using this link https://gofund.me/777d9b0b).
Thank you for your continuing support.
Simon Stokes (co-chair of SCAG)