Local MP Maria Miller has said, “It’s our responsibility to make sure we have the right Local Plan for Basingstoke and local councillors will, I am sure, be looking very carefully at the guidance from Government to make sure we have the best plan for our town, carefully balancing the need for new homes for people in our community with the need to safeguard green spaces, quality of life and the local environment. Basingstoke is a great place to live and we all have a responsibility to keep it that way. The Local Plan has a crucial role in shaping the way our town develops in the coming years and I urge everyone to be involved in the process as Councillors take it forward in the coming months.”
Government Response to Local Planning Consultation April 2021 (relevant extract from Government paper-see link below) , “Many respondents to the consultation were concerned that the ‘targets’ provided by the standard method were not appropriate for individual local authority areas. Within the current planning system the standard method does not present a ‘target’ in plan-making, but instead provides a starting point for determining the level of need for the area, and it is only after consideration of this, alongside what constraints areas face, such as the Green Belt, and the land that is actually available for development, that the decision on how many homes should be planned for is made. It does not override other planning policies, including the protections set out in Paragraph 11b of the NPPF or our strong protections for the Green Belt. It is for local authorities to determine precisely how many homes to plan for and where those homes most appropriately located. In doing this they should take into account their local circumstances and constraints. In order to make this policy position as clear as possible, we will explore how we can make changes through future revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework, including whether a renaming of the policy could provide additional clarity.”
Link to Government response to Local Planning Consultation April 2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/changes-to-the-current-planning-system/outcome/government-response-to-the-local-housing-need-proposals-in-changes-to-the-current-planning-system