Meeting documents

Any changes will be reported at the meeting.

Councillor A Cole substituted for Councillor B Russel

To approve as correct records the Minutes of the meetings held on 11 and 18 May  2016, attached as Appendices.

RESOLVED –

That the minutes of the meetings held on 11 and 18 May be approved as correct records, subject to the inclusion of Cllr C Paternoster in the attendance for 11 March 2016.

Members to declare any interests.

Cllr P Cooper declared a Personal interest in item 5 as a Member of the Silverstone Racing Club.

To consider the report attached as an Appendix.

Contact Officer: Peter Williams 01296 585208

As reported previously AVDC does not have an up to date local plan. The current adopted plan dated from 2004 and did not take account of current government policy. The most recent attempt to produce a replacement plan was withdrawn following an examination in public in 2014. Since then the Council had been working to produce a new local plan for adoption by mid-2017. The Government required submission by early 2017.

As outlined in the officer’s report, the initial scoping consultation on the new Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan (VALP) and call for sites took place in 2014. An issues and options consultation took place in 2015 which had looked at how 31,000 houses could be accommodated in the vale by 2033. The summary of the responses had been made available on the Council’s website. Where possible the content of the responses had also been taken into account in the preparation of the draft plan. It was acknowledged that any comments received on the draft plan would also be taken into consideration before the plan was finalised for pre-submission consultation.

The Council had undertaken a Buckinghamshire Housing and Economic Development Needs Assessment (HEDNA) in conjunction with the other Buckinghamshire councils. This had established that to meet the Vale’s own housing needs, VALP needed to deliver 21,300 new homes and 22 hectares of Class B1/B2/B8 employment between 2013 and 2033.

Following a revision in 2016 to add new sites and revised conclusions, a Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment (HELAA) had concluded that there was potential capacity for 25,882 houses. If Aylesbury had to meet its own needs then the potential supply healthily exceeded the requirement. However, Government planning policy set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) stated that the assessment of housing need must be based on assessment across a Housing Market Area (HMA). Aylesbury fell within four HMAs – they did not have to conform to local plan boundaries. A best fit HMA had been drawn up which showed that the local plan areas with the strongest connections to the Vale were Wycombe and Chiltern/South Bucks. The total need for the best fit HMA was for 50,000 new dwellings.

The officer’s report also referred to unmet housing need in relation to constraints such as Green Belt. This could mean that Councils cannot find enough land to meet their own housing needs. This was the case for the two plan areas mentioned above. Their current estimate of unmet need was around 12,000 houses.

This meant that Aylesbury Vale was being asked to accommodate 12,000 houses on top of the Council’s own need of 21,300. The draft VALP therefore included an overall requirement for 33,000 houses over the 20 year period. The figure had increased as Chiltern and South Bucks were working on a joint local plan.  The figure did not include any unmet need from other councils as no other council had requested a contribution to meeting the need within their HMA. The figure for unmet need could  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.