Ashford Borough Council s2

Civic Centre Tannery Lane Ashford Kent TN23 1PL www.ashford.gov.uk

Ref No: 0165 Date: 10th June 2016 Media Release Embargo: n/a

Planning our future together – Local Plan to 2030 consultation begins

Ashford Borough Council is currently preparing a new Local Plan for the borough. The plan sets out the land that needs to be provided in the borough to accommodate new homes and jobs up to 2030. It also includes the policies that will be used to help decide planning applications.

The Local Plan to 2030 aims to make sure that future development within Ashford is well planned, helping to create great places and strong communities and provides a consistent approach to planning across the whole borough.

The new Local Plan will allocate sites for development as well as establishing planning policies and guidance to ensure local development is built in accordance with the principles of sustainable development.

It will address housing, employment, retail, leisure, transport, community infrastructure and environmental issues such as adapting to climate change and ensuring high quality design.

The general principle of the Local Plan is to encourage growth within the economy of Ashford to provide homes, employment, retail floor space and infrastructure such as community facilities and green spaces.

Whilst growth in the economy is important, the plan also seeks to protect Ashford’s valued assets such as heritage, leisure, nature and open spaces.

Consultations of this nature must run for a statutory period of six weeks; however due to its importance the council has decided to extend this for a further two weeks. The eight-week consultation period runs from 15th June until 10th August and can be accessed at www.ashford.gov.uk/consult

During this period a series of exhibitions and events will be held that will enable local residents to ask questions and find out more about the draft Plan. For more information visit www.ashford.gov.uk/local-plan-2030

Government planning policy is clear that a Local Plan housing target should be principally informed by a thorough and objective Strategic Housing Market Assessment, which the council commissioned in 2014 and was subsequently updated in 2015.

This work has led to the proposal in the draft plan of about 12,200 homes being delivered in the borough between 1st April 2016 and 31st March 2030 through a combination of committed schemes, proposed allocations and windfall developments.

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This represents a very significant reduction in the amount of new sites needing to be allocated for development than was faced in the preparation of the Core Strategy.

The major proposed sites allocations are at Court Lodge Farm (950 homes), Land east of Willesborough Road, Kennington (700 homes), Land at Eureka Park (400 homes) and land south of Kingsnorth (420 homes).

In addition, further extensions to the existing residential areas at Park Farm and Finberry are proposed as well as the consolidation of the Waterbrook site as a mixed residential/employment site together with an enlarged truck stop.

In parallel with the new Local Plan, a draft Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) charging schedule has also been produced. The CIL aims to provide a more consistent approach to determining financial contributions from developers of new developments towards local strategic infrastructure provision.

The existing process of securing contributions through legal agreements (‘s106’) will continue but be scaled back to provide mainly for local or ‘onsite’ infrastructure provision and affordable housing.

The council will progress the CIL charging schedule alongside the development of an Infrastructure Delivery Plan to support the Local Plan 2030.

Cllr Mike Bennett, portfolio holder for planning and development, said: “The Local Plan is an important document which will have an effect on everyone so it’s vital the whole community, from residents and businesses to community groups and other stakeholders contribute.

“This is a draft plan - we need views from all interested parties to help make any changes needed. We want the whole community to engage in the preparation of the Local Plan so we can shape our future together.”

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Notes for editors

Useful links

For more information visit www.ashford.gov.uk/local-plan-to-2030

To visit the consultation portal and take part in the Local Plan to 2030 consultation visit www.ashford.gov.uk/consult

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Background

Since the last principle planning policy document for the borough (the Core Strategy) was adopted in 2008 a lot has changed in terms of national and local planning policy.

When adopted, the new Local Plan will supersede the current suite of documents contained within the Local Development Framework (Core Strategy 2008, Town Centre Area Action Plan 2010, Tenterden & Rural Sites Development Plan Document 2010 and the Urban Sites & Infrastructure Development Plan Document 2012.

The one exception is the Chilmington Green Area Action Plan (2013), which will be saved and continue to form part of the development plan for the borough alongside the Local Plan to 2030.

Previous consultation

Although this is the first time the composite draft Local Plan will have been subject to any form of public consultation, a large amount of local informal consultation has taken place to date.

The initial stage saw officers engage with a variety of local communities through the ‘Plan- it Ashford’ exercise which sought to establish general likes and dislikes about their areas and what they considered to be the main issues that needed addressing, whether they be planning related or not.

Subsequently, a range of local events were arranged to exhibit the proposed sites that had been put forward for inclusion in the draft Plan through the ‘call for sites’ process. This provided local residents with a chance to comment on individual site options at an early stage and to inform officers of the local context.

Further events were held in several locations to discuss remaining ‘shortlisted’ site options once the initial sieve of site submissions had taken place.