Adopted SPD and Emerging Core Strategies - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Michael, At Wokingham, our submitted Core Strategy made reference to a number of exsiting SPD. I can see no problem with this. However, you will need to consider if the Core Strategy is due to replace policies from the existing Local Plan which provided the justification for the SPD. This is due to happen at Wokingham and the Council has therefore reconsulted on the existing SPD to ensure that they are compatible with the new policies within the submitted Core Strategy. If we hadn't done this, there is a risk that those parts of existing SPD that relied upon policies that had subsequently been replaced would no longer be valid as they could not be providing additional guidance to a current policy. I hope this helps.

We actually took legal advice on this very point. In summary the response was that you need an adopted policy of some sort (either LDF or saved development plan) to hang it on. In some cases we have been able to use saved UDP policies and simply flag up emerging draft LDF policies (for the purposes of continuity). There seems to me to be little point in adopting a UDP linked SPD unless it is intended to replace it with an equivalent LDF policy. In others we have had to wait until the relevant DPD was adopted before finalising the SPD. In the latter case we have, where possible, produced the 2 in parallel but waited until the DPD legal challenge period was up before adopting the SPD. Would be happy to let you see some of our various adopted (and draft) SPDs if this would help. Hope this helps