Agenda item

To receive a presentation updating members on the Local Development Scheme and the progress being made on putting together the Local Plan.

The scrutiny panel received a presentation and timetable from Helen Murch (Head of Strategic Planning and Design) updating members on the work being done on emerging local plan policies. 

1.            Presentation

During the presentation Helen Murch highlighted the following: 

·         The proposed forward programme for preparation of the final local plan was set out with key dates.  A draft of the full plan was due to go to be approved at an Extraordinary Council meeting on 9 June 2021.  This will be followed by extensive consultation during June and July. 

·         Following this work will be done to enable the plan to be submitted to the secretary of state as part of regulation 19 in 2022 with a view to final adoption in 2023/4. 

·         Over the next 6 weeks work is being done to update the vision with member workshops during February and March as well as focussed community engagement. 

·         Everyone was encouraged to complete the vision questionnaire on the Council website. 

·         Key pieces of evidence were being prepared to enable the Council to understand housing and employment needs, land supply pipelines and scale of unmet need.  Some external consultants had been bought in to speed up this process.

·         The Local Development Scheme has been revised and published.

·         Work was also taking place to develop an updated spatial vision for the borough to underpin the plan. 

·         The Council would be co-operating with neighbouring boroughs on unmet needs. 

·         Over the next 4 months officers would be working with members on spatial visioning and selecting sites suitable for development. In April this work will be tested, consultation will take place and evidence and policy finalised as the draft plan is put together for Council in June.

·         The evidence base covered housing (assessing housing need), employment including possible intensification of industrial areas, Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land, retail needs, sustainability assessments, infrastructure including transport, character design and placemaking and viability testing.  

·         The next steps included completion of the spatial vision questionnaire, spatial vision workshops, publication of the evidence base and the spatial options and site selection workshops.  The workshops would give members the opportunity to feed into to the development process. 

2.         Questions/Comments

2.1       The possibility of using strategic industrial land for development was something that would be considered. 

2.2       The view that is was important that not all development should take place in Edmonton or in the East of the Borough. 

2.3       Concern about the short end of month deadline for completion of the spatial vision questionnaire.  A link to the questionnaire had been circulated with the Members Newsletter and an individual invitation should have been emailed to all councillors. 

2.4      The questionnaire included questions about the type of place people want to live in and gives choices about the type and level of growth people would like to see as well as what the role and character of Enfield should be within London by 2039. 

2.4       The questionnaire was not highly technical and aimed to seek views on the type of place that people wanted Enfield to be. 

2.5       There would be a full public consultation, after the draft plan had been considered by Council in June 2021. 

2.6       The Leader explained that Enfield had a statutory obligation to produce a local plan.  It was a technical piece of work.  There were choices to be made on where development should take place and where it should not.  The whole process was very long.  Some consultation had already been carried out.  The approval in June was an important step in the overall process.

3.            Chair’s Summing up

The Chair summed up the information provided. The spatial survey was available now, the spatial vision would be developed in March, in April site testing would take place and in May the draft plan would be finalised for consideration at full Council in June.   

It had been suggested that the panel hold an extra private session (workshop) n April or May to facilitate cross party policy development which would feed into the emerging draft plan. 

Some concern was expressed about holding a session in private.  It was agreed that further information would be provided and circulated to members before this was agreed.