What is a Local Plan?

The Local Plan will establish a strategy and framework for how communities and places in Bath and North East Somerset will change and grow over the next 15-20 years. It sets out planning policies that will shape any development that requires planning permission. The plan identifies the need for new homes, jobs, and the services and infrastructure required up-front to support them. It provides strong guidance to developers and the council on where this development should happen and what form it will take. It is about ensuring that we maintain and create sustainable, vibrant and healthy places and communities.

Change and development will happen whether we prepare a Local Plan or not. We are preparing a Local Plan so that we can shape the location and form of future development and help ensure that it is better supported by the timely provision of necessary infrastructure. Without a Local Plan, speculative development will take place in less sustainable areas, and in an unplanned way. We also prepare a Local Plan in order to protect what is special about Bath and North East Somerset, including its unique, high quality and renowned natural, built and historic environment.

This Local Plan covers the whole of Bath and North East Somerset and will establish the planning framework for the district from 2025 to 2043. It will contain a vision, strategy and policies to guide and manage growth and change; and will be the basis for how planning applications for new development are decided. It will also play a crucial role in delivering the council’s corporate priorities, including improving people’s lives, tackling the climate and ecological emergencies, and preparing for the future in terms of the economy, responding to housing need and addressing inequalities. The Local Plan will be reviewed around every 5 years and updated where necessary.

We launched the preparation of our new Local Plan in 2022 based on planning for around 700 homes per year. In 2024 the government imposed a new mandatory housing target (known as the standard method figure of housing need) on the council of more than double that amount at around 1,500 homes per year. Alongside doubling the housing target for Bath and North East Somerset the government also published some important changes to national policy. As a result of the increased housing target and national policy changes, the council decided to reset the Local Plan so that it could undertake further evidence work and assess further options for providing increased levels of development. This Options Document primarily focusses on options for providing the additional development now required.

We will prepare the Local Plan through consulting and involving communities and a range of other stakeholders – giving people a bigger say in how the area will change. Preparation of the Local Plan is governed by legislation and will go through a series of stages which are summarised in the diagram below. Following the resetting of the Local Plan, the diagram sets out the anticipated timetable for each stage of preparation of the Bath and North East Somerset Local Plan.

This document sets out options or all reasonable alternatives for addressing the increased identified needs and policy approaches to help deliver healthy and sustainable places. Not all of these options will be taken forward for allocation for development in the Draft Local Plan. Its purpose is to elicit comment and discussion around the options presented. We previously presented options for development to meet a lower level of identified need and policy approaches in spring 2024. The comments received in response to the 2024 consultation are still valid and will continue to be carefully considered by the council in preparing the Draft Local Plan. Therefore, we are not responding to the issues raised at this stage. The comments received during this reset options consultation, as well as the comments on the spring 2024 options plus ongoing engagement with communities and other stakeholders, will be used to help shape the Draft Local Plan. It is the Draft Local Plan that sets out the council’s proposed site allocations and policies to shape and guide change and development that requires planning permission.

Once approved by the council, the Draft Local Plan will also be subject to formal consultation. Both the Draft Local Plan and comments received on it will be submitted for examination by a government appointed Planning Inspector. The Inspector will be examining whether the Local Plan is sound. As defined in national policy the tests of soundness comprise:

• Positively prepared: comprise a strategy that at least meets identified needs
• Justified: based on proportionate evidence
• Effective: deliverable over the plan period and based on effective joint-working on cross boundary strategic matters
• Consistent with national policy: as set out in the national planning Policy Framework and other government statements

Once it has been examined and subject to the Inspector’s conclusions, the Local Plan can then be adopted. Once it is adopted, the Local Plan becomes the statutory framework for determining planning applications. As the Local Plan progresses through its stages of preparation it will start to carry greater weight in determining planning applications. However, only limited weight can be given to it at the Draft Local Plan stage and more significant weight given to it once it has been examined by an Inspector.