Wiltshire Council’s Local Plan is set to be withdrawn following a meeting of the authority’s cabinet.

Members have agreed to recommend to full council on May 19 that the draft blueprint for the period up to 2038 is withdrawn from examination.

It comes after independent planning inspectors wrote to the council with two options: to withdraw the Local Plan from examination or request that the inspectors draft a final report, which would recommend non-adoption.

It comes after inspectors raised concerns about the achievability of the council’s proposed programme and the timeframe for the examination which would result from it.

They also stated: “It is currently unclear whether the council has sufficient sites within the Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment to identify enough suitable and available land for allocation under a revised strategy. If an additional call for sites is required, this is going to add further, significant, and currently unplanned time to the programme going forward.“

If the full meeting of the council rubber stamps withdrawal of the plan, Wiltshire will be required to prepare a new Local Plan under the government’s new plan-making system, which is designed to support faster and more streamlined plan-making.

Wiltshire Council says that its cabinet will consider the beginning of a new Local Plan at its meeting in June.

The local authority will be one of the first to move into the new local plan making system. We will watch carefully to see how the process unfolds as well as the implications of the lack of an up-to-date plan in the meantime.

Please contact us to find out more what this will mean for your plans, project or land.