Including draft policies at preferred options stage - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
Open group
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Started - July 2012
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Last activity - Today
Including draft policies at preferred options stage
My Council is currently working on the Preferred Options for the Core Strategy. We have had some discussions with the Government Office about the inclusion of draft policies in the Preferred Options document and they have indicated that it is not appropriate to do this at this stage in the process. We are aware that other authorities have included policies at the Preferred Options stage but we are not sure if we should go this far. I would like to here other authorities views on this.
We included a set of indicative policies as an appendix to the preferred options. It can be made clear that these are suggested wordings and will/may be subject to change. Whether this was the riight approach or not is debateable, but we thought it would be helpful to the public.
Our Preferred options for the Core Strategy is in two parts. The strategic spatial part contains the range of options considered and the preferred option. The second part is the development control policies and this consists of actual policies. The spatial options include a list of criteria that will be included in the policies that will be in the submitted plan. No view yet from the Government Office on whether this is the right approach.
Our Core Strategy did include draft Policies at preferred options stage taking the view that it was important to get the strategy right prior to the irrevocable step of submission and that the only way of being sure of a reaction was to present stakeholders with something that showed how a coherent final document would look. We published other options and the reasons for their rejection in a separate document. No objection was raised to the overall approach by Government Office for the North West. Stakeholders found the clarity useful. We did have to beef up the alternative options document and repeat consultation on it because GONW considered that it had not been made sufficiently clear that it was open to representors to support other options or put forward new ones. We have now had the PEM for Independent Examination and there is no indication to date that our approach has raised any fundamental procedural concerns.