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Residents across Preston, South Ribble and Chorley will next year get the chance to have their say on where the thousands of new homes needed in Central Lancashire over the next two decades are ultimately built.
Work to determine the most suitable sites for residential – and also commercial – development is nearing a conclusion and the public will be asked for their thoughts on the final list of proposed locations in a consultation set to begin in February.
More than 120 potential plots were suggested almost two years ago as part of the process of drawing up the first-ever Central Lancashire Local Plan. That document – which will dictate the land that can be built upon in the area until 2041 – is due to be adopted before the end of 2026 by the three neighbouring councils that make up the patch. However, it first has to be submitted to the government by next June for inspection.
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A report presented to a meeting of the Central Lancashire joint advisory committee revealed that assessment of the suggested sites was close to completion.
The trio of authorities are pressing ahead with work on their collective local plan, which began back in 2018, but will now have to incorporate any changes the government decides to make to national planning rules – the most significant being a likely increase in the minimum number of new homes each council area has to deliver every year.
Under draft proposals set out over the summer, the annual target for South Ribble would more than treble to 546 dwellings, Preston’s would more than double to 662 properties and the tally for Chorley would increase by a more modest 19 percent, but from a much higher starting point – meaning the borough will have to build 601 new homes.
That takes the annual total for Central Lancashire to 1,809 per year – almost 500 more dwellings than the 1,334 suggested by the councils during a previous consultation on the proposed development sites for the joint local plan, which was undertaken early last year.
That figure was itself higher than the government’s so-called ‘standard method’ for calculating new housing totals – which generated a Central Lancashire annual figure of 944 – because of the need to factor in employment trends and commuting patterns.
The joint local plan will also include a pooling and redistribution of Preston, South Ribble and Chorley’s nationally set individual targets to better reflect local need and capacity. The currently proposed split (see table below) would have to be changed to reflect any increase in the overall number demanded by the government.
Site suggestions
The potential sites for new housing and employment use were drawn from several open calls for suggestions of suitable locations. They also include local authority-owned land and plots that have previously been proposed for development, but never actually built upon.
The suggested locations have been assessed for their suitability in relation to highways, transport, utilities and their impact on local heritage. Flood risk assessments have also been carried out, but further work will be undertaken on those sites where that risk is deemed high, in order to determine whether it can be mitigated or the land should be removed from the list of suggestions.
However, the local authorities also have to consider – and will be judged upon by a planning inspector – whether the chosen sites are actually likely to deliver the housing or employment developments for which they have been proposed. To that end, landowners and site promoters who put a piece of land forward for consideration have been asked to fill a questionnaire providing information about site ownership and any legal restrictions.
Those sites that are ultimately included on the list of locations for development in the Central Lancashire Local Plan will still have to be given the green light via individual planning applications when developers decide they want to build on them – but they will be considered to have been ‘allocated’ for that purpose, a status which will weigh heavily in their favour.
Building blocks for the future
A plan is also being drawn up to ensure the necessary infrastructure is delivered to meet the demand for the services and community facilities that will be generated by the new housing to be built across Central Lancashire in the years to come.
Committee members were told the document will outline “what infrastructure is needed, when it is needed, who is responsible for providing it, how much it will cost and how it will be funded”.
Gail Wootton, South Ribble and Chorley councils’ director of property and planning, said it was “critical” that the impact of future housing development was assessed in order to determine how it will “trickle into the need for investment in infrastructure”.
The outcome of that process will inform the financial and other contributions developers are required to make through the planning process when bidding for permission to build.
Going grey
Preston, Chorley and South Ribble councils have submitted responses to the government’s own consultation on its proposed planning reforms, which includes the reclassification of some greenbelt as so-called ‘grey belt’. It has been provisionally defined as land which makes “a limited contribution” to the purposes for which greenbelt was originally intended.- and has been characterised by the government as “poor quality” and potentially inaccessible to the public in any case.
Any council that cannot meet its housing, commercial or other needs from the use of brownfield sites will be expected to undertake a greenbelt review, with the aim of identifying grey belt areas and releasing them from the associated restrictions on development.
In Central Lancashire, Chorley has almost double the volume of greenbelt found in South Ribble and more than 20 times that in Preston.
Not all green fields are designated greenbelt – with the latter being specifically designed to curb urban sprawl. Greenbelt can also contain previously developed land.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said one of the “golden rules” of the government’s proposed planning reforms will be that any land released from greenbelt protection for new housing must deliver a development where at least 50 percent of the properties fall into the discounted ‘affordable housing’ category, with “an appropriate proportion” being reserved for social rent. However, that rule will be subject to an assessment of the financial viability of the proposed development for the housebuilder behind it.
Doing the splits
Prior to the government’s proposed new housebuilding target for Central Lancashire of 1,809 homes per year, this was how Preston, South Ribble and Chorley councils planned to pool and redistribute their lower 1,334 tally – a split that will have to be revised when the new overall target is eventually confirmed.
2023-2027: Preston – 600; South Ribble – 400; Chorley – 334
2028-2032: Preston – 500; South Ribble – 450; Chorley – 384
2033-2038: Preston – 400; South Ribble – 500; Chorley – 434
Source: Central Lancashire Local Plan Preferred Options Consultation, 2022
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