Following a meeting of Cabinet, Winchester City Council has confirmed that its draft ‘Regulation 18 (pdf, 24.7mb)’ Local Plan will go out for consultation on 2 November 2022 and will run until midnight on 14 December 2022.
The council is encouraging all residents, businesses and organisations in the Winchester district to once again have their say. The draft plan sets out the council’s vision for future development across the Winchester district – outside the South Down’s National Park. It covers Winchester city itself, the market towns, villages and countryside. Respondents are being asked to comment on the policies included and the site allocations.
This Local Plan addresses some major challenges, including new development management policies against which planning proposals will be assessed. Some key themes include:
The Climate Emergency and Cutting Carbon
The biggest challenge of all is Climate Change and this draft plan is setting the highest possible standards for environmental design for homes and commercial development – its policies designed to cut carbon and ensure development is safe and easy to walk, cycle and use other low carbon methods of transport
Affordable Homes
This draft plan takes a new approach to affordable housing targets – replacing an expectation for affordable housing with a requirement for truly affordable homes that developers must achieve.
The Natural Environment
This local plan takes the approach of ‘brownfield first’ – both in prioritising the use of previously developed land over green fields, but also in the phasing of development. The sites proposed are those which have the best sustainability, can deliver affordable homes, and have the least environmental impact on our district. Over 90% of the sites that developers put forward have not been included in this plan.
In total, the draft Plan includes over 80 policies covering other themes including the historic environment, creating a vibrant economy and biodiversity and open space amongst others.
Cllr Jackie Porter, Cabinet Member for Place and the Local Plan says:
“I cannot emphasise enough how important your feedback is in developing this plan. Your feedback to date has helped shape it into the plan you see before you. This is not the final plan, the feedback that you give us now will help us make it better and stronger. We have called it Your Place, Your Plan for that reason. We look forward to hearing your views.”
The consultation is open from 2 November until 14 December and can be found by visiting www.localplan.winchester.gov.uk from these dates. On this site, visitors will also find the draft Regulation 18 Local Plan document and can sign up for further updates too.
Page last updated: Friday 28 October 2022