COUNTRYSIDE campaigners are calling on Solihull Councillors to throw out its local plan and go back to the drawing board.
Warwickshire Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has written to councillors ahead of the Full Council meeting on Tuesday (October 8) where a motion to withdraw the plan and confirm the authority’s next steps have been tabled.
Last month the Planning Inspectorate concluded the borough’s plan for how the land will be developed should be withdrawn as the plans due to a shortfall of land supply.
The letter, signed by Mike Sullivan technical secretary at CPRE Warwickshire was sent before the officer’s advice was made public, urged members to ‘withdraw the Plan and commence work on a new version of the Plan now’.
It added: “Most of the work done by your officers to draw up the Plan and produce the Sustainability Appraisal can be used again, with relatively little new research. Public consultation on Issues and Options could be commenced within a few months.
“CPRE would advocate that a new Solihull Local Plan should prioritise urban ‘brownfield’ development – notably up to 1,400 homes in the Town Centre (the Mell Square redevelopment), and a similar number north of the NEC, and only take land for new housing from the Green Belt adjacent to the main built-up area, not around any of the rural settlements.”
The local plan has been faced with numerous challenges over the years.
It has faced High Court challenges and changing policies enforced by the Government.
Most recently in December the former secretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said when issuing the current National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that Councils did not, and do not, need to redraw their Green Belt boundaries or sacrifice protected landscapes to meet housing numbers.
However ten months on the new Labour government has proposed changes seek to overturn that policy, and to make planning authorities release land from Green Belt to meet housing targets.
As well as having to allocate space to fulfill the number of houses Solihull has been allocated the Council also faces the challenge of having to help out neighbouring authorities which are unable to meet their numbers due to lack of land.
The CPRE letter said: “The positive part of the Labour government’s planning changes is to bring in a new form of strategic planning and to review Green Belts at that level. A strategic plan for the West Midlands Combined Authority area would give weight to the preservation of the Meriden Gap between Birmingham and Coventry, as did Regional Planning Guidance in the past.
“The government plans legislation to set up this higher level of planning in this Parliament. The replacement Local Plan should be drafted to handle the period – the next five years – until this better form of planning comes into force.”
A Solihull Council spokesperson said: “The next steps for Solihull’s Local Plan will be discussed at the Full Council meeting on Tuesday 8 October.
“The recommendation put to Council is that the Draft Submission Local Plan (October 2020) be withdrawn from examination, and that the next steps are approved to start preparing a new Plan.”
