Agenda item

Horsham District draft Brownfield Land Register 2017

To receive the report of the Cabinet Member for Planning and Development

Decision:

RESOLVED

(i) That the publication of the draft Brownfield Land Register for a four week period of consultation from 20^th October to 17^th November 2017 be approved.

(ii) That the Cabinet Member for Planning and Development be authorised to agree minor editorial changes to the draft Brownfield Land Register.

(iii) That the Cabinet Member for Planning and Development be authorised to approve the final Brownfield Land Register for publication by 31^st December 2017.

REASONS

(i) To ensure that the statutory requirements in the Town and Country Planning Act as inserted by the new Housing and Planning Act 2016 and the Town & Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017, are met.

(ii) It is appropriate to invite public participation in the preparation of a new planning document for the District, in accordance with the Statement of Community involvement, February 2017.

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member for Planning and Development reported that the preparation, maintenance and publication of a brownfield land register was a new legal requirement, introduced by the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Therefore, a draft register had been prepared in line with best practice for publication for consultation.

The purpose of the register was to identify brownfield land within the District which was considered to be suitable for housing development. The register comprised two parts:

Part 1 was a list of all sites that were considered to meet the legislative criteria of being ‘suitable, available and achievable’ for development.

Part 2 of the register would comprise only those sites in Part 1 that the local planning authority had decided would be suitable for a grant of Permission in Principle. If no sites were considered to meet the criteria for Permission in Principle, Part 2 of the register could be left empty.

The draft Brownfield Land Register proposed 39 sites for inclusion in Part 1, all of which had been identified from sites contained in the District’s Strategic Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA); through planning applications; or were sites allocated for development in the Council’s adopted planning policy documents. None of these sites were considered suitable for a grant of Permission in Principle and it was therefore recommended that there were no entries in Part 2 of the Register this year. Any decision to include land in Part 2 of the register and to grant planning permission in principle was specifically excluded from being an Executive Decision under Regulation 19 of The Town and Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017. Any future recommendation to include site(s) in part 2 of the register would therefore be a Council decision unless the Council sought to delegate it.

The Council would take account of comments received, make any necessary amendments and publish the register on the Council’s website by 31^st December 2017. If any substantive changes were proposed in response to the consultation, it would be necessary to prepare an update in early 2018 for approval by Cabinet. The Brownfield Land Register would be reviewed and updated annually.

The proposed content of Brownfield Land Register had been discussed by the Planning and Development Policy Development Advisory Group and a small number of factual amendments had been made to the register in light of the discussion.