Report to Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council and Tendring District Council by Roger Clews BA MSc DipEd DipTP MRTPI an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State Date: 10 December 2020 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended) Section 20 Report on the Examination of the North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan The Plan was submitted for examination on 9 October 2017 The examination hearings were held between 16 & 25 January 2018, on 9 May 2018, and between 14 & 30 January 2020. File Ref: PINS/A1530/429/9 North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, Inspector’s Report, 10 December 2020 Contents Abbreviations used in this report page 3 Non-Technical Summary page 4 Introduction page 5 Context of the Plan page 6 Public Sector Equality Duty page 7 Assessment of Duty to Co-operate page 7 Assessment of Other Aspects of Legal Compliance page 8 Assessment of Soundness Issue 1 – Housing requirements page 10 Issue 2 – Employment land requirements page 16 Issue 3 – Garden community proposals page 17 Issue 4 – Vision, strategic objectives and spatial strategy page 23 Issue 5 – Other Plan policies page 25 Overall Conclusion and Recommendation page 27 Attachments Inspector’s post-hearings letter, 8 June 2018 [IED/011] Inspector’s supplementary post-hearings letter, 27 June 2018 [IED/012] Inspector’s post-hearings letter, 15 May 2020 [IED/022] Appendix Schedule of Recommended Main Modifications 2 North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, Inspector’s Report, 10 December 2020 Abbreviations used in this report The 2004 Act The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended) dpa Dwellings per annum DPD Development Plan Document GC Garden community HRA Habitats Regulations Assessment LPA Local Planning Authority MM Main modification NEAs North Essex Authorities NPPF National Planning Policy Framework ONS The Office for National Statistics The Plan The North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan PPG Planning Practice Guidance The Regulations The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 (as amended) SA Sustainability appraisal The Section 1 The North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan Plan UPC Unattributable population change 3 North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, Inspector’s Report, 10 December 2020 Non-Technical Summary This report concludes that the North Essex Authorities’ [NEAs] Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan provides an appropriate basis for the planning of the NEAs’ area, provided that a number of main modifications [MMs] are made to it. The NEAs have specifically requested that I recommend any MMs necessary to enable the Plan to be adopted. Following the hearings, the NEAs prepared schedules of the proposed MMs, carried out sustainability appraisal [SA] of them, and updated the Habitats Regulations Assessment [HRA] to take account of them. The MMs were subject to public consultation over a six-week period. In some cases I have adjusted their detailed wording and made consequential adjustments where necessary. I have recommended their inclusion in the Plan after considering the sustainability appraisal and Habitats Regulations Assessment and all the representations made in response to consultation on them. The Main Modifications can be summarised as follows: • Deletion from the Plan of the proposed Colchester / Braintree Borders garden community and the proposed West of Braintree garden community; • Modifications to the policies for the Tendring / Colchester Borders garden community, to ensure that the Plan provides a justified and effective policy framework for its development; • Modifications to the policy on housing requirements to ensure that the Plan effectively sets out how those requirements are to be met; • Modifications to the policy for employment land to ensure that its requirements are soundly based and that it sets out effectively how they will be met; and • Modifications to ensure that the Plan’s Vision, strategic objectives and spatial strategy, and its policies on the presumption in favour of sustainable development, infrastructure and connectivity, and place-shaping principles, are justified, effective and consistent with national policy. 4 North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, Inspector’s Report, 10 December 2020 Introduction 1. This report contains my assessment of the North Essex Authorities’1 Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan in terms of Section 20(5) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended) [the 2004 Act]. It considers first whether the Plan’s preparation has complied with the duty to co-operate. It then considers whether the Plan is compliant with the legal requirements and whether it is sound. At paragraph 182, the National Planning Policy Framework [NPPF], published in March 2012, makes it clear that in order to be sound, a Local Plan should be positively prepared, justified, effective and consistent with national policy. 2. A revised version of the NPPF was published in July 2018 and was further revised in February 2019. It includes a transitional arrangement in paragraph 214 which indicates that, for the purpose of examining this Plan, the policies in the 2012 NPPF apply. Similarly, where the national Planning Practice Guidance [PPG] has been updated to reflect the revised NPPF, the previous versions of the PPG apply for the purposes of this examination under the transitional arrangement. Therefore, unless stated otherwise, references in this report are to the 2012 NPPF and the versions of the PPG which were extant prior to the publication of the 2018 NPPF. 3. The starting point for the examination is the assumption that the North Essex Authorities [NEAs] have submitted what they consider to be a sound plan. The Publication Draft of the NEAs’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, submitted for examination in October 2017, is the basis for my examination. It is the same document as was published for representations in June 2017. Main Modifications 4. In accordance with section 20(7C) of the 2004 Act the NEAs requested that I should recommend any main modifications [MMs] necessary to rectify matters that make the Plan unsound and legally non-compliant, and thus incapable of being adopted. My report explains why the recommended MMs are necessary. The MMs are referenced in bold in the form MM1, MM2, etc when they first appear in the report, and are set out in full in the Appendix. 5. Following the examination hearings, the NEAs prepared a schedule of proposed MMs, carried out sustainability appraisal [SA] of them, and updated the Habitats Regulations Assessment [HRA] to take account of them. The schedule of proposed MMs and the accompanying SA and HRA reports were subject to public consultation for six weeks. I have taken account of the consultation responses in coming to my conclusions in this report, and in this light I have made some adjustments to the detailed wording of the MMs. None of those adjustments significantly alters the content of the MMs as published for consultation, or undermines the participatory processes, the SA or the HRA that have been undertaken. Where necessary, I explain the adjustments in the report. 1 The North Essex Authorities are: Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council, and Tendring District Council. 5 North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan, Inspector’s Report, 10 December 2020 Policies Map 6. Local planning authorities [LPAs] must maintain an adopted policies map which illustrates geographically the application of the policies in the adopted development plan. When submitting a local plan for examination, LPAs are required to provide a submission policies map showing the changes to the adopted policies map that would result from the proposals in the submitted local plan. For Braintree District Council, the submission policies map consists of all the “Proposal Maps” following page 209 in their submitted Publication Draft Local Plan, and for Colchester Borough Council, it comprises the separately-bound set of “Policies Maps” which accompanied their submitted Publication Draft Local Plan. 7. The submission policies maps for Braintree and Colchester include geographic illustrations of the broad locations of the proposed Colchester / Braintree Borders and West of Braintree garden communities [GCs], which are the subject of submitted Plan policies SP7, SP9 and SP10. However, I am recommending MMs which remove those two proposed GCs from the Plan2. Consequently, when the Plan is adopted, the geographic illustrations of those two proposed GCs on Braintree’s and Colchester’s submission policies maps should not be carried forward to their adopted policies maps. 8. The Plan proposes a third GC, the Tendring / Colchester Borders GC, which is the subject of policies SP7 and SP8. I am not recommending the removal of this GC from the Plan. Accordingly, the geographic illustrations of its broad location on Colchester’s and Tendring’s submission policies maps will need to be carried forward to their adopted policies maps. Context of the Plan 9. The NEAs’ shared strategic Section 1 Plan [hereafter referred to as “the Section 1 Plan” or “the Plan”] was produced collaboratively by Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council and Tendring District Council in order to address strategic planning matters across their areas. The Section 1 Plan, which is the subject of this report, forms an identical part of each of the three NEAs’ submitted local plans. Also as part