£600,000 for new LDP
RHONDDA Cynon Taf Council is set to spend £600,000 on preparing a new local development plan.
The council is looking to introduce a new plan to replace the current one, which runs from 2011-21.
RHONDDA Cynon Taf Council is set to spend £600,000 on preparing a new local development plan.
The council is looking to introduce a new plan to replace the current one, which runs from 2011-21.
A LDP forms the basis of decisions on new local developments and sets out the aims, vision and objectives for the future of developments in the area.
A review has found that a revised LDP is needed in RCT due to changes in planning law and policy and a failure to deliver the allocated developments as expected.
From 2006, the year when the current plan started, 6,299 houses have been built in RCT and of these 4,543 have been built since the plan’s adoption in 2011.
There have been 1,214 affordable houses completed during the plan period and 1,006 since the adoption of the LDP in 2011.
More than 13,000 houses have been given planning permission by the council since 2006 and another 9,192 since 2011.
At the same time the Cardiff capital region has agreed to set up a strategic development plan which will have control over larger regional developments in the 10 council areas.
The draft delivery agreement sets out the timetable for delivering the revised LDP and how the council plans to engage with the community while developing it.
The council estimates that the new LDP should be in place no longer than three-and-a-half years after work on it starts, with a completion date of around December 2023.
The timetable involves submitting the delivery agreement to the Welsh Government by May next year, starting to prepare the pre-deposit or preferred plan in June 2020, consulting on the preferred plan in August and September 2021, consulting on the actual deposit plan in July and August 2022, submitting the e-plan in January 2023, putting it out for public examination in May and June 2023, and then adopting the plan in December 2023.
Here’s a breakdown of the £600,000 non-staffing cost of preparing the LDP which the council says is available from existing budgets:
■ The delivery agreement will be met by existing staffing and resources;
■ £250,000 for the pre-deposit plan;
■ £100,000 for the deposit plan;
■ £200,000 for the submission and examination of the plan; and
■ £50,000 for adoption and annual monitoring of the plan.
The council’s LDP team would see extra staff added to it – it would be made up of a development services manager, a planning team policy leader, two senior planning policy officers, two planning policy officers, and a planning assistant who may also be required to help with the regional SDP at certain stages.
The extra staff will increase the staffing budget by £39,000 a year.
Cabinet agreed the draft delivery agreement for the revised LDP back in October and it was due to go before full council for approval on November 27.