Claygate Courier—issue 56—March 2025
Pages 1 and 5
HUGE RISE IN TARGET FOR HOUSEBUILDING
The government has increased Elmbridge’s housebuilding target by 139 per cent – a huge rise on top of a figure that was already considered unachievable without encroachment on the Green Belt.
The revised National Planning Policy Framework, published in December, imposes drastically increased housing targets for the vast majority of planning authorities outside London. It contains a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, although a variety of protections are included for the Green Belt, various types of conservation area, and other land.
These designations become especially relevant if a local authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of land for housing and/or does not have a valid Local Plan in place. Elmbridge’s current Local Plan expires in 2026, and a new Draft Local Plan is unlikely to be in place before 2028, the version previously submitted having been found to be “unsound” by the Planning Inspector. This is likely to make it increasingly difficult for Elmbridge to refuse applications for developments which satisfy the generalised requirements of the National Planning Policy Framework.
Claygate Parish Council will, of course, continue to oppose any development on the Green Belt around the village.
But the planning turbulence does not end there. After Elmbridge’s Draft Local Plan was found “unsound” and requiring extensive revisions, the Parish Council learned that the government will not permit extensions to the standard six-month period for revising Draft Local Plans after an Examination in Public. The Elmbridge Planning Department has therefore recommended that the existing Draft Plan be withdrawn and rewritten.
To make the process even more complicated, the timetable for the rewriting of the Elmbridge Local Plan overlaps with the accelerated timetable for the planned reorganisation of local government in Surrey. Elmbridge’s new Local Plan timetable calls for it to be ready for Examination in Public by May 2028.
But in May 2027, the government’s proposed new unitary authority in Surrey will, in principle, take over the planning function, as Surrey’s borough and district councils disappear. It is not known how this transition will be managed or what effect the reorganisation of Surrey may have on the timetable for a new Local Plan.
