Following the recent Cotswold District Council Members Briefing on the Local Plan partial update and Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (known as the ‘SHELAA’ for short), this email is to inform you that the updated SHELAA is now available to download from the Council’s website at the following link:

https://www.cotswold.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-policy/evidence-base-and-monitoring/

Some further information on the SHELAA is also provided here:

https://www.cotswold.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-policy/strategic-housing-and-economic-land-availability-assessment/

To recap, what is the SHELAA?

The SHELAA confirms the availability of land and assesses the potential suitability of development sites for allocation in the local plan. It also considers whether development would be achievable and viable. In so doing, it creates a shortlist of candidate sites to take forward for further assessment.

The report assesses newly submitted sites resulting from call for sites campaigns in 2019 and 2020, as well as reassessing previously identified sites from earlier revisions of the SHELAA.

The SHELAA does not in itself allocate land for development and does not grant planning permission for development. It is one of a number of evidence studies that the Council is required to produce, which helps to understand the various issues about potential development sites. The report helps to inform the decision of which sites should be allocated in the Local Plan. It can also be used by neighbourhood planning groups as evidence to support Neighbourhood Plans.

What happens next and how can people get involved?

The SHELAA will form part of an upcoming consultation on the first stage of the Local Plan Partial Update, which will give residents and organisations the chance to feed back on the report. We especially want local people to participate in the consultation once it starts. In so doing, they can tell us if there are any factual inaccuracies with the SHELAA site assessments, if there is anything that we’ve missed, or if they agree with the site assessments. The Forward Planning team will contact you separately to let you know more about the Local Plan consultation.

The Council has to keep the SHELAA under regular review, as the situation surrounding potential development sites is continually changing. It is anticipated that a further update to the SHELAA will be undertaken before the Local Plan Partial Update is submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for examination. This will take consideration of any responses to the Local Plan consultation.

The Forward Planning team will commence further assessment work on the shortlisted sites in the meantime – for example, flood risk assessment, infrastructure capacity / delivery, accessibility testing, viability appraisal, and so on.

Kind regards

 

Democratic Services

 

Notice Date: 05/11/2021