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Flintshire Local Development Plan (LDP)

Published: 21/09/2020

When it meets on 22 September, Flintshire’s Cabinet will be asked to recommend to the Council that it submit the LDP to Welsh Government (WG) and Planning Inspectorate Wales (PINS) for Examination in Public (EiP).

The LDP was approved for public consultation by the Council on the 23 July 2019. Consultation took place between 30 September and 11 November 2019 and attracted 1281 representations from 657 separate respondents. 

This important council strategy and policy document sets out the planning framework in Flintshire and sets out the following aims:

  • to provide opportunities to deliver between 8-10,000 jobs by maintaining a viable portfolio of employment land, to support wider regional growth ambitions;
  • to provide for 6,950 new homes over the plan period; 
  • to facilitate the delivery of two long standing strategic site commitments at Northern Gateway and Warren Hall;
  • to locate growth sustainably in the County’s service centres and sustainable settlements, based on a settlement hierarchy;
  • to provide a pragmatic solution to affordable and specialist housing needs;
  • to minimise the need to amend Flintshire’s green barriers to facilitate sustainable development;
  • to ensure that sites are viable and deliverable, and that infrastructure is or can be provided to accommodate the planned growth.

The representations received, along with a number of other documents, must be submitted to WG and PINS for independent EiP once the Council has considered any representations.  Flintshire County Council meets on 29 September to consider this.

No wholescale changes to the LDP, such as the deletion of sites and/or the inclusion of new sites, are proposed as no substantive evidence was submitted during the consultation that would warrant the need for such changes, and because this could constitute a fundamental change to the LDP and threaten its ‘soundness’   

Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Planning and Public Protection, Councillor Chris Bithell, said:

“After considering all the objections received during the consultation period, we believe that the LDP remains sound and provides a robust basis for submission to the WG and PINS for independent Examination in Public.

“Whilst objections were made, in particular to housing allocations, the Council has a responsibility to provide such sites where a need has been identified and the objections made are not considered to override that responsibility or question the soundness of the sites allocated. The purpose of the LDP is to seek to meet the needs of Flintshire in the most sustainable way possible.”

An independent Inspector will consider the soundness of the LDP alongside all the representations made by the public and other parties, during the EiP hearings, which will take place over a number of weeks in early 2021.  The LDP should be submitted by October 2020 in order for this to happen.  The LDP will be formally submitted in October if the County Council meeting on 29 September recommends this. 

PINS are committed to delivering the Inspector’s Report to the Council within 12 months of the LDP being submitted. 

Once the Council has received the Inspector’s Final Report, the report must be published and approval sought at a full Council meeting to formally adopt the LDP in line with the binding nature of the Inspector’s Report.