DEVELOPMENT PLAN SYSTEM

Development Plan System



Development Plan System

Introduction

A local development plan is the statutory form of land use development plan that each local authority in Wales is required to prepare under Part 6 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The plan will consist of a written part, containing policies and proposals, together with a reasoned justification for them, and a plan, based on an Ordnance Survey map. Policies are a set of words which describe what is or are not acceptable; proposals are developments or activities that are proposed for the future. The first stage will be to identify issues, then to create a vision of what sort of place Newport should be that will address these issues. This paper discusses the development plan systems in Wales and England.

Discussion

Development Plan System in Wales

The plan has to be prepared according to the rules set down by central government. This means that the general soundness of the plan will be decided by an independent inspector appointed by the Welsh Assembly Government. In setting out the process in this Delivery Agreement, maximum opportunity is given for input to the plan and for consensus to be built as far as possible. It is important therefore to be involved early on and to put forward your views. The inspector will be interested in all the evidence on each aspect of the plan. The plan cannot be prepared in a vacuum of course, and will need to take account of all relevant factors, including:

Existing development

The wider context, including neighbouring authorities

planning policy guidance from the Welsh Assembly Government, some of which implements European Directives

The plan will be the key document for determining the sort of places in which we live, work and take our recreation. It will be a key means by which we look after the environment for the benefit of this and future generations. The Welsh Assembly Government is keen to see the local development plan produced within a four year timescale. Although this may sound like a long time, it will actually require much focused responses from all concerned because of the number of stages involved and the statutory procedures that have to be followed(Scoones, 2007, pp 589). Newport is in a good position, however, in that there is an adopted plan currently in operation to guide new development, and it will continue to do so while the new plan (the LDP), is prepared. Newport also has a number of large development sites that, in view of their size, will not be complete by 2011. The process of preparing the new plan involves a number of stages, some of which overlap. In brief, the process may be summarised as:

evidence gathering for use both in the plan itself and in the

assessment of the plan's likely impact on the environment;

a preferred overall strategy for the plan;

the draft plan, which is then formally placed on deposit1;

public examination of the draft plan by an independent inspector;

the inspector's report on the draft plan;

formal ...