Examination of the local plan

A Report was taken to an Extraordinary Full Council on Tuesday 8 February 2022 where the recommendation to adopt the Borough Local Plan was agreed.

Examination hearings

The plan is now being independently examined by the Planning Inspector.

Stage 2 Hearings 

The Stage 2 hearing sessions form part of the examination of the Borough Local Plan. Examination programmes and agendas will be published on the Inspector's Documents webpage as they are issued by the Inspector. Agendas will be issued approximately one week in advance.

Session dates

  • Week 1 - Monday 5 to Thursday 8 October 2020
  • Week 2 - Tuesday 20 to Thursday 22 October 2020
  • Week 3 - Monday 9 to Thursday 12 November 2020
  • Week 4 - Tuesday 17 to Friday 20 November 2020 
  • Additional hearing date - During the BLP examination hearing session on Wednesday 21 October for Matter 3 (Housing) Issues 2 and 3, the council agreed to do some additional work in relation to the housing trajectory. The Inspector will hold a hearing to discuss the updated information on Wednesday 9 December 2020. Please see the full details of the additional hearing session in the Inspector’s letter referenced ID-26 - letter from the Inspector to the council re document PS/058.

In view of the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Stage 2 examination hearings will proceed ‘virtually’ by means of “Zoom”, an online video conferencing system. Please see the information below on how participants can join the hearing sessions and non-participants can view the hearings on YouTube. Please see the Inspector’s “Virtual hearings using “Zoom” – guidance to participants” document.

Participants 

The Programme Officer will contact registered participants with an invitation to join the relevant Zoom hearing session.  

Please note, participants are restricted to those who submitted duly-made representations at Regulation 19 or the Proposed Changes consultations and who have communicated to the Programme Officer that they wish to participate. The participation list is now closed. 

How to view the hearings if not participating 

The hearing sessions will be streamed live to YouTube for non-participants and the public to watch via the council’s YouTube channel.  

This will enable people to watch the virtual hearings as they would physical sessions. Please note, you are not required to log into YouTube or create an account in order to watch the live-streaming. 

Stage 1 Hearings 

As part of this examination process the plan was subject to 3 days of stage 1 hearings which took place from 26 – 28 June 2018. Following the Stage 1 hearings, the Inspector issued an advice note setting out initial findings in relation to the matters she had been considering in the examination process up to that point.  The advice note and subsequent correspondence between the Inspector and Council can be found on the Inspector's Documents and council's documents pages. 

For further details on the hearing process, please refer to the guidance note from the Planning Inspector.