The South Warwickshire Local Plan will provide an important framework for the development of housing and employment land over a 25 year period to 2050 in the vast majority of my constituency.
It will determine in many vital respects what our area looks and feels like to live in today and for future generations, and it is perhaps the most important document that you have never heard of.
It is a joint effort between Warwick District and Stratford District Councils and is therefore the proposal of the Green, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties who run those Councils. It is however also heavily influenced by the decisions of the Labour Government in Westminster - two decisions in particular.
First, this Labour Government decided that, compared to the expectations of its predecessor, more of the new housing the country needs would be placed in the countryside as opposed to in urban areas (I’m sure the fact that Labour runs urban councils more often than it runs rural councils is entirely coincidental).
For example, Coventry will be asked to find space for less than half as many homes as previously set out, and South Warwickshire will be expected to provide nearly twice as many as previously required and on which our Councils had been planning*. This is a radical change, especially as all councils have to demonstrate that they have land set aside for development to meet five years’ worth of expected need at any one time. The amount of land in South Warwickshire needed to be allocated to housing will now have to increase significantly.
The second national Government decision that matters here is the imposition of a time limit for the submission of a local plan for authorisation by an independent planning inspector (without which it cannot take effect) at the end of this year. After that, local plans must conform with a new set of expectations, not all of which are yet clearly defined. What we do know of them suggests that there will be less local discretion on where development should go under those new expectations, and more central direction.
Much time and money has already been expended on the development of this Local Plan. Much of that would be wasted if the Plan had to be re-written to comply with new Government rules.
Perhaps even more seriously, while Councils do not have viable and approved Local Plans in place, they are more vulnerable to speculative development, especially on green field sites. The position is made worse still by the Government’s decision in December 2024 to weaken protections for much Green Belt land by reclassifying it as ‘grey belt’ land, thereby weakening the protection against development in inappropriate locations.
Having to essentially restart the lengthy Local Plan development process would extend such a period of vulnerability in South Warwickshire considerably. It is understandable then why the Councils in question here are keen to get their current Local Plan submitted by the 31st December this year, but that urgency has consequences.
There is now essentially no time for anything but minor changes to be made to the proposed Local Plan if the December deadline is to be met. As I say, we are in this position mostly because of a Government decision, but frankly we should have mitigated its impact with swifter decision-making locally. We could have been building houses more quickly.
One example is the houses expected to be built on the site of the former secondary school in Kenilworth. The school moved sites three years ago but we have only just seen initial planning permission granted, with the sites of the old school becoming an increasing eyesore with mounting security costs. This is largely because the Green-led Warwick District Council administration has been chasing - and continued at Planning Committee to chase - an unrealistic pipe-dream about the type of homes developers are actually able to build.
More generally, the decision to prepare a plan for 25 years is itself questionable. Although the aim is to provide long-term certainty, we have already seen how quickly Government policy can change and alter planning requirements. Over the next five years, let alone the next 25, there will inevitably be further changes in policy, population etc, that cannot reasonably be foreseen today. There is therefore a real risk that the housing provision set out in this Local Plan will prove to be significantly out of step with local needs well before 2050.
A shorter Plan period would have allowed for easier readjustment if necessary.
The proposed Local Plan relies heavily for its viability on new road and rail provision, which has neither been fully identified nor properly assessed, let alone funded. Shortfalls here and in other requirements of the Plan (schools, hospitals, GP surgeries, etc.) could see it rejected by a Planning Inspector and return us to square one, with all the problems that brings set out above.
As it stands, I do not have confidence that this Local Plan is sufficiently robust to guide South Warwickshire's future development and I do not think its authors have left themselves enough time to bring it up to the required standard to serve our area’s needs without ruining it in the process.
*[Footnote: Under the previous 2023 standard method, Coventry were expected to build 3,188 houses per annum. Coventry’s current target is 1,455 houses per annum, a 54% reduction. South Warwickshire’s combined former target was 1,218 and is now in Regulation 19 is 2,210 houses per annum, an 81% increase]
