Councillors in Basingstoke & Deane will make a new attempt to discuss a proposed draft spatial strategy on Thursday (September 4).

The council was sent back to the drawing board last year when the Government made changes to the NPPF which saw the district’s requirement for new homes increase from 830 per year to 1,150.

Its new draft strategy will help the council move forward its draft Local Plan to decide where homes will go over the next 15 years. Thursday’s environment and infrastructure committee meeting will seek to move forward with the draft strategy which will be consulted on later this year before it moves to the regulation 18 consultation.

Cabinet member for strategic planning and infrastructure Cllr Andy Konieczko said: “As we’re all aware, developing our Local Plan has been particularly challenging and frustrating this time.

“The publication of yet another new National Planning Policy Framework has forced us to go back a few stages in the Local Plan-making process to consider how the much higher housing figures imposed on us by the Government could be suitably delivered.

“It has been incredibly difficult to adapt our previous spatial strategy to the Government’s new planning rules and this has not been helped by the tight deadlines imposed on all affected local authorities to re-work their Local Plans.

“We want to retain as much control as possible over development in our borough and ensure that we continue to thrive long into the future. This means that we need to move forward with updating our Local Plan and making the most of the poor hand that we’ve been dealt by the planning system.

“Getting the updated plan back to this stage has involved making a lot of tough decisions. In particular, we’ve been forced to allocate extra sites that we’d previously been able to resist including. I know that this will cause a lot of frustration for many.

“Despite these challenges, we’ve worked hard to create a draft spatial strategy that seeks to balance the competing requirements on our precious landscapes and rural settlements, maximises development on brownfield land, and helps to ensure that the extra housing is well supported by new infrastructure.”

Visit www.basingstoke.gov.uk/about-LPU.

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