Planning

Over the course of the last month I have had several meetings with the Minister for Planning, and also with Wiltshire Council's leadership team and various development officers, to investigate the ongoing issues relating to the National Planning Policy Framework.

I spoke to Wiltshire Council about the timing of their plans and was told that they expect to have the Core Strategy in place by the end of next year; I was assured by the Minister that there will be no opportunity for developers to force through developments during a transition period.

I also set out that there are parts of Wiltshire that would welcome additional housing and others, particularly around Devizes, where there is a sense that the town has had too much housing and now needs more focus on infrastructure. I was told that the Council is now in receipt of £6.8 million of Regional Growth Funding, which will mean that important infrastructure upgrades can be made.

There are however ongoing questions, particularly around allocation of land, with the "five-year plus twenty percent" land supply being of concern, and also over how we actually get funding into the system in order to build the affordable housing that we know we so badly lack. Only the week before the meetings half the constituents that had attended my weekly surgery had come because they had completely inadequate housing for their families' needs.

We all appear to agree that if the plans are done correctly and we have an accepted Core Strategy that is then verified through robust neighbourhood planning, then we will end up with a system where localism determines the sort of development that happens. Overall I think this was a productive series of meetings and I will continue to reflect the issues raised both up to the Ministers and out to Wiltshire council.

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