Issue - meetings

A report to raise awareness of the statutory requirement to undertake a review of the Local Plan and to highlight the approach taken during the review.

Contact: Johanna Scrutton, Planning Policy Team Leader, Planning Policy Group; Mathias Franklin, Head of Planning and Development

Johanna Scrutton, Planning Policy Team Leader, provided the Panel with an update on the Kirklees Local Plan review process, advising the Panel that this is the first of two invitations to attend scrutiny, with today being the first to talk through the local plan review process.  The second visit will be to come back later in the year to go through the outcomes of the review and any next steps for a potential update of the local plan.

In summary, the Panel was informed that it is a statutory requirement to publish a review of whether the local plan remains fit for purpose, and that has to be carried out, within five years from the date of adoption. For Kirklees, the assessment has to have been undertaken and taken through the cabinet process and be in the public domain by February 2024.

At the end of July 2023, the decision to start the review was taken by the Strategic Director David Shepherd, and this decision was put into the public domain through advertising the significant decision notice,  through Kirklees together, local press releases and all social media platforms. 

The appended report, outlines that the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) template has been used to undertake the assessment of the local plan.  The reason for using this template is that the Local Government Association has worked with PAS to develop this process, and it is a standardised approach which is being promoted nationally.

It sets a standardised approach and allows benchmarking against other authorities. There is also the additional advantage that it feeds into a wider body of what  PAS are producing on local plan making, which aims to get consistency across the country in the way that local authorities approach their decision making and their processes.

The Panel was directed to the template that was attached to the appended report and advised that there are 14 main questions aimed at looking at assessing the plan against current national planning policy, and also against the Councils strategies and policies.

It looks at the spatial development strategy and whether Kirklees is delivering the numbers of housing and employment that it said it would across the plan period.
It also looks at the performance of the policies both individually and the interrelationships between them.

The Panel was informed that to inform that process, officers have looked at all the national guidance and used ongoing monitoring processes that feed into the annual monitoring report, and spoken to colleagues across different services who use the plan in the delivery of their work and their strategies.

As an additional level of trying to add robustness and transparency to the process, the Planning Officers Society has been commissioned to fulfil a role as a critical friend.  They provided advice at the beginning of the process about their experience working with other authorities, which involved looking at the pros and cons of a partial or full review. Those outcomes are listed in the appended report, and they will also  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6