Local plan consultation

Development and housing

Terry Whittaker/2020Vision

Local plan consultation

What is the local plan?

Shropshire Council are currently consulting on the draft local plan, which will outline the distribution of development until 2036. 

This review includes, but is not necessarily limited to: 

  • Deciding on the location of future housing development to accommodate the many thousands of houses that the county has committed to. 
  • Deciding on the location of future employment sites. 

Consultation on this review is ongoing until Friday 5 February 2021. Shropshire Wildlife Trust will be responding to the draft plan, ensuring a balance is struck between the need for providing homes for people AND wildlife.  

Regulation 19’ pre-submission draft - December 2020

This is the final stage of consultation; this is your last chance to make a comment before it goes to the planning inspector.

We encourage everyone to take a look at the final version of the plan – ‘Regulation 19’ pre-submission draft – and add your views via the Shropshire Council website, which is here.

The deadline for submission is Friday 5 February 2021 at 5pm. 

For ease we have included a downloadable copy of this plan below. 

Regulation 18 pre-submission draft local plan - February 2019

The consultation for this stage has now closed – you can download our full response below. 

Pleasingly, the efforts of the Shropshire Wildlife Trust have enacted the following positive changes to the draft local plan from version 18 to 19: 

•    Due to our expressed concern over intensive livestock units and their impact on the environment, there is now more consideration in the plan given to minimising and mitigating the impacts of agricultural development on the environment.
•    We underlined the fact that business energy is the highest contributor to climate change in the county and thus, there is now good reference in the plan to supporting businesses to reduce their contribution to climate change by 'encouraging greater use of renewable and ‘low carbon energy sources’. 
•    Our continuous awareness raising on the Climate Crisis has led to the plan including climate change mitigation within the 'high quality design' parameters for houses. This means developers must now incorporate 'maximising energy efficiency (including maximising opportunities for solar gain), minimising carbon emissions and making efficient use of water' in to their designs for new houses.
•    Our campaigning has also led to the inclusion of a specific policy on the delivery of sustainable, low carbon, renewable infrastructure, such as green energy production.

Unfortunately, not all of our concerns have been heeded. We are still incredibly concerned about the following themes within this Local Plan:

•    There is still significant support for HS2, and now even stronger support for the North West Relief Road, both of which are environmentally damaging schemes that the Wildlife Trust has major concerns with.
•    The plan remains inconsiderate of the requirement to provide accessible local natural green space for people for their mental and physical wellbeing.
•    Although there is more consideration of the Climate Crisis in this final draft, this is still insufficient, and there remains underwhelming solutions to the Ecological Crisis.
•    The plan continues to support development where a release of greenbelt would cause moderate or above risk of harm to the environment, which is unacceptable.
•    The plan remains unambitious with its target of increasing land for biodiversity by 10% - the Wildlife Trusts’ believe that 30% of the land should be under recovery for biodiversity by 2030.

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