Now this IS spooky

South Somerset (shared Chief Executive: Mark Williams) has spookily similar problems with its Local Plan to East Devon – including issues with employment land.  They are ahead of us in that their plan has had a preliminary inspection (see post below) and the Inspector has found such serious flaws that South Somerset District Council has suspended its formal submission for at least six months whilst the problems are tackled.  Below is a summary of the Inspector’s worries.

Examination of the South Somerset Local Plan –  Inspector’s Preliminary Findings

 Following the close of the hearing sessions into the South Somerset Local Plan (LP) and having considered all the evidence, there are three significant issues of concern, relating to soundness, which I must raise.  They relate

 firstly to the Sustainability Appraisal with regard to the Yeovil Urban Extension;

 secondly to the proposed direction of growth at Ilminster; and

 thirdly to policy SS3: Delivering New Employment Land.

[The 13 page document goes on to discuss each issue about which the Inspector is not satisfied and the conclusions for each issue are shown below:.  All comments are taken verbatim from the document.]

 Conclusion on First Issue (Sustainability Appraisal)

51. In summary I have four concerns regarding the SA:

The lack of weight attached to the need to seek to use areas of poorer quality agricultural land in preference to that of higher quality (bearing in mind that once lost such high quality land cannot be retrieved);

The lack of substantive evidence to demonstrate that there are significant differences in terms of landscape impact between several of the options that have been considered.   Opportunities for mitigation, primarily through layout and design do not appear to have been sufficiently addressed;

Lack of consistency regarding the consideration of protecting and enhancing the historic environment; and

Lack of clarity regarding the scoring for objective 14 – conserving and enhancing biodiversity and geodiversity

Conclusion on Second Issue – Direction of Growth at Ilminster

54. The Council has acknowledged that there is an error in the Sustainablity Appraisal for the town and it now concludes that Canal Way scores better than Shudrick Valley in sustainability terms. I agree that Canal Way is the most sustainable option. The issue, however, is whether or not the current direction of growth (Shudrick Valley) is unsound and I conclude that it is, because the direction of growth is not justified when considered against the reasonable alternative of Canal Way.

55. On the second issue I am of the view that the proposed direction of growth at Ilminster appears to be not sound (policy PMT3).

Conclusion on Third Issue – Employment Policy

56. Following concerns raised at the hearing sessions the Council has reviewed its position regarding employment provision.   The Council has accepted that the employment land provision of:

5ha for Wincanton;

3ha each for Somerton, Ansford/Castle Cary and Langport/Huish Episcopi; and

2ha for each of the six rural centres,

‘is not properly evidenced’.

57. Consequently the Council proposes to delete those requirements from policy SS3 and insert the following comment: ‘additional employment land requirement to be identified in Allocations DPD’. However, this approach is not consistent with the advice in paragraph 154 of the NPPF which states that local plans should set out ‘what will or will not be permitted

and where’. The policy still retains the number of jobs ‘to be encouraged’ in each of these settlements but in the case of the six rural centres there is no indication of how the 1,013 jobs should be distributed. This means that in those settlements decisions on planning applications (for employment uses) could not be made with a high degree of predictability

and efficiency (NPPF paragraph 17, first bullet point).

58. My current view is that policy SS3, as proposed to be amended, is not sound.

59. Even if I were persuaded that the Council’s changes to policy SS3 are sound, I consider that they would be a Main Modification because they introduce amended jobs and floorspace targets, without which this element of the local plan would not be based on a strategy which seeks to meet objectively assessed development requirements