Three Inspectors’ Report Successes

Tetlow King Planning (TKP) acting on behalf of the South West RSL Planning Consortium has received good news following the release of three Inspector’s Reports all in the same week. TKP represented the RSLs at all three Inquiries.

North Somerset Local Plan

The Inspector has largely supported the Council’s affordable housing policies despite strong objections from the development industry and Fordham Research. He agreed with Tetlow King’s suggested definition of affordable housing to include both social rented and intermediate housing and substituted this in place of the Council’s definition which had treated low cost market housing separately. He also said the Council’s affordable housing target should be reviewed in the future given the high level of unmet need. In addition, he agreed with Tetlow King that more detail on the delivery of affordable housing should be included in an SPD.

Bath and North East Somerset Local Plan

Again the Inspector has largely endorsed the Council’s policies on affordable housing which Tetlow King helped to defend at the Local Plan Inquiry. However, he did agree with Tetlow King that the affordable housing target should be included in the Plan and not SPD and that this should be increased from 30% to 35%. This includes 75% social rented and 25% intermediate tenure split. This is likely to have a significant impact in the District increasing the anticipated supply of affordable housing on suitable sites. He has also agreed with us that exception sites should not be procluded in rural settlements in the Green Belt.

North Wiltshire

The Inspector endorsed the Council’s policies which Tetlow King largely supported. This included a 50% affordable housing target in rural areas.