THE BANES LOCAL PLAN
The Somerset Guardian, 3rd April 2024
Planning is one of the most contentious local issues; most accept the need for new housing but few want it built near them. This makes the current consultation by Bath and North East Somerset important. It is currently asking for your views on a new Local Plan, which will involve reviewing the Core Strategy, Placemaking Plan and Local Plan Partial Update and establish the planning framework for our area up to 2042.
I appreciate that this sounds boring and I doubt that a twenty year plan will really be delivered. After all, what happened to the last one? Equally, I do not trust these forms of consultation; they usually conclude with whatever the bureaucracy wanted in the first place. Nonetheless, I would still encourage residents to respond. If you participate, then when the council tells you to commute to work on the buses it cancelled or on a home knitted bicycle, at least you will have had your say.
The Local Plan is supposed to form the strategy and policies which will guide and manage how the area grows and changes over the next twenty years - including how planning applications for new developments are decided. These plans include controversial issues such as housing, travel, business and the environment.
Details of the consultation and how to respond to it can be found on the Council’s website: https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/local-plan. The consultation period has been extended to the 16th April and I would encourage everyone to take time to respond to B&NES as part of the official process, even though the concerns of North East Somerset will probably be ignored in favour of the denizens of Bath.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance: jacob.reesmogg.mp@parliament.uk.
