Issue - meetings

[Report of the Director for Planning, Regeneration and Development. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for  Planning.]The Local Development Scheme (LDS) sets out the work programme for future planning policy documents that makes up the Local Plan, and provides early opportunities for public and stakeholder engagement in the emerging local planning framework. The Council is required to review its LDS regularly, and if significant changes to the project plan for preparing planning policy documents are envisaged, then these should be set out in a revised LDS. This update to the LDS sets out the revised work programme for the preparation of policy documents from April 2016 onwards.

The Cabinet Member for Planning introduced the report which set out the revised timetable for the Local Plan documents that the Council was looking to prepare over the coming years. The Cabinet Member for Planning advised that the revised Local Development Scheme (LDS) was intended to replace the current outdated LDS published in January 2015. The LDS forms an important component of the plan-making process because it keeps the public and other stakeholders informed of the planning policy documents the Council intends to prepare and the timescales that are being worked towards. 

The Cabinet Member for Planning advised that as a result of the significant volume of representations received during the Local Plan consultation in 2015, delays had occurred in the process of producing the documents. Due to the importance of these documents, it was felt prudent to give sufficient opportunity  for  representations to come forward  and  additional time for their analysis.

RESOLVED

1.    To note the revised Local Development Scheme (LDS) at Appendix A of the report; and

2.    To adopt the revised LDS at Appendix A of the report and to bring this into effect on 1^st April 2016.

Reasons for decision

Under Section 15 (1) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended), the Council has a statutory duty to maintain an up-to-date LDS. The revised LDS fulfils this duty, reflecting the current timetable for the preparation of the Development Plan Documents that, when adopted, will comprise Haringey’s Local Plan.

Alternative options considered

The option of not updating the LDS was considered but dismissed. Section 19 (1) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended) requires that all Development Plan Documents (DPDs) be prepared in accordance with the LDS. This includes complying with the timetable contained in the LDS for each of the relevant DPDs. If the project timetables for preparing a DPD and that in the LDS differ significantly, this is likely to lead to a finding of non-compliance with the statutory legal test at the independent examination of the relevant DPD, making the document ‘unsound’.

Therefore, the only valid option available was to revise the out-of-date project timetable in the LDS to reflect the current timetable to satisfy the legal requirements of the Act.