Thursday 5th September and Wednesday 11th September
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HOUSING TARGETS FOR EAST DEVON:
Getting closer is the final putting together of the new East Devon Local Plan – and on the morning of Wednesday 11th September, the district council is holding a public meeting to debate this key mapping of the future of East Devon and the Sid Valley’s place in it. And at the top of the agenda is looking to new local housing targets in Devon, which is going to be very tricky, with the Devon Housing Commission recently saying we need ‘affordable homes at the scale required’.
Wherever we end up with our long-term plans, we will need to be getting to net-zero with rural housing and getting to net-zero with rural transport and energy – with a few ideas from the VGS submission 2023 to the last local plan consultation providing some ideas.
We are now at the stage of allocating actual sites for housing.
HOUSING ALLOCATIONS FOR SIDMOUTH:
In December 2021, a ‘large’ housing allocation was proposed for Sidmouth – followed by an initial report and initial reaction in September 2022, together with the possible visual impact and yet further reports – the main concern being the lack of infrastructure for such a ‘large’ area of new housing.
The developers who own the site have built elsewhere in Sidmouth – and there have been questions raised in a piece on these pages from January 2023 [How good is Persimmon’s new-build housing?] and a further piece from November 2023 [How good is Persimmon’s new-build housing? – part two] – which in turn asks the questions “How green is Persimmon’s new-build housing?” and “Can the housebuilder which owns large areas of building land in the Sid Valley step up to the plate and deliver?”
Councillors and officers have considered these questions and are coming to decisions.
COUNCIL MEETING ON HOUSING ALLOCATIONS: TOWN COUNCIL: 5TH SEPTEMBER
There will be two formal council meetings to consider the housing site allocations for Sidmouth in the draft local plan.
Firstly, the regular town council planning meeting on Wednesday 11th has been postponed (it clashes with the EDDC meeting: see below). Instead, there will be an Extraordinary Meeting at 10am on Thursday 5th September to consider the Town Council’s response to the development site allocations in the latest version of East Devon Plan.
The agenda of the extraordinary town council planning meeting makes it clear what will be happening:
East Devon Local Plan – Consideration of site allocations for the Local Plan
To consider a report by East Devon District Council’s Planning Policy Team regarding the new East Devon Local Plan prior to its consideration by the EDDC Strategic Planning Committee on the 11 September. The EDDC report will be published, week commencing 2 September and forwarded to Members as soon as possible thereafter.
COUNCIL MEETING ON HOUSING ALLOCATIONS: DISTRICT COUNCIL: 11TH SEPTEMBER
Secondly, the promised holding of a public meeting in Sidmouth on 11th September to allow for wider debate on these proposals is actually the same as the district council’s strategic planning committee’s own meeting – which will be about the consideration of site allocations for the draft Local Plan on Wednesday 11th September at 10.00 am. Members of the public are being encouraged to put questions to councillors at the opening of the meeting.
As part of the agenda of the strategic planning committee, councillors will be looking at the proposed housing allocations for Sidmouth and surrounds – which includes the following:
Recommendation:
That Strategic Planning Committee agree to include the recommended site allocations set out in this report, for Sidmouth and surrounding areas, for inclusion in the Regulation 19 draft of the plan scheduled to be considered by this Committee in November 2024.Reason for recommendation:
To ensure that appropriate land, in Sidmouth and surrounding areas, is allocated in the new local plan to provide for development needs, specifically for housing.3.7 Four sites within Sidmouth (including the village of Sidford) are proposed for allocation:
- Sidm_06a for 30 dwellings;
- Sidm_29 (a/k/a Sidm_24) for 1.63ha of employment land;
- Sidm_31 for 15 dwellings;
- Sidm_32a (a/k/a Sidm_01) for 127 dwellings and 0.27ha of employment land.
Finally, the key document with the detail which the committees will be looking at is the Sidmouth site selection report – with a screenshot of the proposed sites here (which can be zoomed into in the original report online):
More of what councillors have been considering can be found in their Sidmouth and Newton Pop Working Group Notes.
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