Authority Monitoring Report 2021 to 2022

We are required by legislation to have a new Buckinghamshire-wide Local Plan in place by April 2025. This Local Plan will cover the whole of the Buckinghamshire Council area, for the period up to 2040. It will be part of the development plan.

After publishing its intentions for planning reform in the Planning White Paper in August 2020, in May 2022 the Government set out more detail on its proposed reforms to the planning system in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (LURB). Since then it has consulted on more detailed reforms to national policy.

The Council will continue to review its approach and timetable for preparing the Local Plan for Buckinghamshire (LP4B) as more detail and certainty emerges.

We continue to progress specific tasks that contribute to the LP4B process – see below.

Our ‘Brown before Green’ pledge means that we are committed to prioritise using previously developed land (brownfield sites) wherever we can to help reduce the need to build on greenfield sites. Greenfield sites are sites that have not previously been built on.

We have carried out 2 calls for brownfield sites and as of 31 May 2022 we received over 300 site submissions. Following an initial assessment it was concluded that not all of these sites would be suitable, available and achievable for housing and economic development.

You can view a full list of submitted sites as a spreadsheet or via our interactive map here.

Between 13 June and 11 September 2022, we invited submissions for a wider call for sites. You can view the combined list and interactive map of all the sites submitted here. We now have in the region of 1000 sites to consider. It’s important to note that we are publishing this information as submitted by the site promoters and there is much more work to do.

We will assess all sites for their suitability, achievability and availability for development through our Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (HELAA) process. During the wider call for sites, we published our draft methodology for the HELAA for comment.

Even if a site is suitable, achievable and available it does not follow automatically that it will be included in the Plan. Sites will need to deliver against the final preferred strategy and objectives for the Plan, and these are still being developed.

Between 29 November 2021 and 11 February 2022, we ran a ‘Discovery and Exploration’ survey to find out issues for the Plan and discover more about people’s ambitions across the Council area.

The Council:

• Issued a press release at the start of the consultation
• Wrote directly to over 2000 stakeholders, including public bodies and organisations on our consultation database asking them to take part in the consultation. This included Town and Parish Councils where they were asked to share the survey with their parishioners
• Advertised the consultation on our website, through Your Voice Bucks which is the Council’s joint consultation portal
• Provided printed copies of the surveys and posters to public libraries, and information for local GP surgeries
• Included an article about the survey in the Council’s residents’ update for the whole of the Council area
• Gave presentations to the Bucks and Milton Keynes Association of Local Councils (BALC) and at developer, architects and agent forums during January 2022
• Reached pupils and parents through the Council’s schools’ bulletin
• Led a social media campaign which reached a wide audience on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn
• Sent a letter to Buckinghamshire MPs and the Council’s Deputy Leader took part in a radio interview about the Engagement with Wycombe Sound in December 2021.

The top priorities emerging from the survey were:

• Mitigating and adapting to climate change
• Protecting and enhancing the environment, including the countryside, Green Belt and Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• Providing for sustainable travel, including public transport, cycling and walking
• Improving transport infrastructure
• Prioritising brownfield sites for development
• Affordable and key worker housing
• Infrastructure and services for new development
• Sustainable, environmentally friendly housing and development
• Health and social care