All local authorities within the UK by law have to provide a local plan. The local plan informs the Development Control department of the planning authority where to permit and reject planning applications. In our case here in Eastleigh, the planning authority is Eastleigh Borough Council. The local plan covers a period of around 20 years and enables the District Council Planning Policy team to plan for the future in terms of housing, jobs and infrastructure. Eastleigh’s local plan process was disrupted several years ago by Hampshire County Council when they withdrew a parcel of land at the last moment, which would have allowed 1,000 homes to be built there. That would have been for the plan period of 2011 to 2029. It is now 2016 and we still do not have a local plan in place that is recognized by the Secretary of State for Housing.
The 2011 to 2029 local plan headlined around about 10,000 homes before it was rejected by the Secretary of State for Housing’s department for too few houses. It was decided, by Eastleigh Council that rather than modify an already outdated plan, to start all over again, so now the local plan period is 2011 to 2036. With a rapidly changing world and rapidly changing local demography, the housing requirement was adjudged to be increasing over the local plan period, so now the headline housing numbers are in the order of 17,000. Before a local plan can be submitted to Government, a public consultation has to take place. The latest local plan public consultation was ratified by Eastleigh Borough councillors at the December 2015 Full Council meeting. The consultation started before Christmas and ended on 17 February 2016.