Agenda item - City Plan Update

7.1 Cllr Jacon Taylor, Deputy Leader of the council and Cabinet member for Finance and City Regeneration presented to the committee. He was joined by, Max Woodford, Director for Place, and Steve Tremlett, Planning Policy and Heritage Manager.

7.2 The Chair sad that it was strange that the city plan was not looking at the new areas that will be coming into the city as part of Local Government Reorganisation and the timing of the new National Planning Policy Framework. Cllr Taylor agreed that it was strange and said that the timing was slightly awkward. He said that they had raised the issue with government and if they were to wait for LGR then they would not even be able to start the process until after vesting day in 2028. He said that they would be in a situation where there were two plans, one for the city on its current boundary and the parts coming into the city would work from the current Lewes District Council local plan. Max Woodford said that Cllr Taylor was right and that there had been lots of noise and complaints about this to the government as there were lots of other areas in the same situation. He said that government were aware of the issue and were working on transitional arrangements. On the NPPF he said that a draft had been published and the final new NPPF was coming in due course, probably after the summer recess.

7.3 Cllr Fishleigh asked what the city’s housing target was and how we were getting on with it? Steve Tremlett said that the current local plan had a housing target of 13,200 homes between 2010 and 2030, which averages 660 per year. Actual housing delivery has been below this and the target wouldn’t be met by 2030. He said that there wasn’t a housing target in policy in the new plan yet. However, they did have a figure from the housing need figure which came from the government’s standard method for calculating housing need, which was the starting point they needed to try to meet through the new plan, and this was approximately 2,500 homes per year. This is significantly higher than the target in the current plan.

7.4 Cllr Fishleigh asked about housing targets for the city when the new mayor was meant to be taking a holistic approach across the whole of Sussex and Brighton. Cllr Taylor said that was where we would end up but weren’t there yet. He said he would love to be delivering the housing target of 2,500 homes, with a good chunk being affordable, but that most people in the room would know its highly unlikely given land availability in the city. Steve Tremlett said that the new city plan is coming ahead of the spatial development strategy that the Strategic Authority would be producing and that meant they would have to use the government’s standard method for calculated housing needs as a starting point. He said that once there is a spatial development strategy in place the Strategic Authority may move those numbers around depending on where there is capacity, which may then give the city a different number to meet and plan for, but that would be for the next review of the City Plan after this one.

7.5 Cllr Miller asked why they could not push the dates back a month if the new NPPF was due to be published shortly. Cllr Taylor said that they were driven by government pushing them to go fast and had funding to do so. Steve Tremlett said that a draft NPPF was published earlier this year and is able to be used for the early stages of plan-making and that a commitment had been made to government to give notice of the intention to prepare a new plan by 30^th June in order to secure additional government funding.

7.6 Cllr Miller said that by the time of the consultation between gateway two and three the city footprint would be expanded and asked if the new residents would be able to take part in the consultation. Steve Tremlett said that this was unknown and that they were awaiting transitional regulations from government.

7.7 Mark Strong said that previously there had been engagement with schools and hoped that it would happen again. Steve Tremlett said that it was unfortunate that the deadlines meant that the consultation was over the summer but said that they weren’t starting from scratch – input received during the previous consultation with young people would still be considered. Max Woodford said that they would be engaging with school during later stages of consultations on policy.

7.8 The Chair said that the city plan was so important and has a big impact on future development, but that people don’t always realise and complaint when planning applications are approved having not engaged in the city plan process has set certain policies or allocated certain sites. Cllr Taylor agreed and said that both he and the Chair had been doing work on this around the number of HMOs in their ward.

7.9 Cllr Cattell stated that having worked in planning she understood that a local plan is a lengthy process and that things changed during that time, including the NPPF and LGR. She said that she was pleased to be a on a member working group looking at the issue. She thanked Steve Tremlett and the planning staff for their hard work.

7.10 Cllr Lademacher asked for the cost of the current plan and extra costs once the city boundaries were expanded. Cllr Taylor said that it may be difficult to estimate the cost of a plan including things like officer time, commissioning studies, and consultation events. He said that expanding the city would not mean a huge increase in costs. Max Woodford said that additional costs once the city was expanded would depend on the evidence coming from the new areas and that the sooner the government gave them transitional arrangements the better. Regarding the total cost of the plan, he said that it was really hard but about £1.6m across the life of the plan (this estimate is in the May 2026 cabinet report).

7.11 Cllr Wilkinson welcomed the progress made. He asked how scrutiny would be involved and how the previous consultation outcome calling for genuinely affordable and social housing would be reflected in the plan. Cllr Taylor said that it was essential that they came back to scrutiny with a draft set of policies and site allocation when they got to that stage. He said that it was great that there was such a desire for genuinely affordable and social housing in the initial consultation and that how that is reflected in policy requires evidence. He said that they could put in a policy that all private development had to include the equivalent of social housing at local housing authority rates but that it wouldn’t be upheld as a policy without evidence and studies to support it, and that it clearly wouldn’t be viable for all private sector housing. He said that they would be pushing the boundaries of what they could achieve but that all policies had to be evidence based.

7.12 RESOLVED – Place Overview & Scrutiny notes the progress to date and future timetable for the new City Plan.