The New Local Plan

Following the successful local elections in 2023, Lib Dem led South Glos Council has been preparing its new draft Local Plan.

The finished plan has been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate and is expected to be examined at a public enquiry later this year.

The Local Plan process considered the land east of Coalpit Heath for development but ultimately dropped the sites citing concerns that, “larger growth would not deliver a substantial level of new services and facilities"; that, "This would build in a need to travel or overwhelm local services and facilities at Coalpit Heath”; and, “The delivery of homes at Coalpit Heath and Yate West would significantly reduce the gap between the separate village and Market Town of Yate and impact on their character.”

Instead, the draft Local Plan allocates other sites - some nearby - including:

Another field at Blackberry Park
A field at the Perrinpit Crossroads
A large site north of Lyde Green on the far side of Westerleigh Road - the North Lyde Ecotech Village.

Your Focus Team has contributed to the draft Local Plan process and we consider the version submitted to the public enquiry to be robust. This version calculates South Gloucestershire’s housing target using the Government’s Standard Method formula and allocates sufficient sites to meet that target.

Cllr Chris Willmore (Liberal Democrat), Cabinet Member responsible for the new South Glos Local Plan

Developers will argue that the Local Plan is not ambitious enough in its housing targets and that it should take a proportion of Bristol's unmet housing need. South Gloucestershire Council has considered Bristol’s unmet housing need, as it has a legal duty to do, but it does not consider that this unmet need can be delivered within South Glos in a sustainable way within the plan period of 15 years. The Council has delivered evidence to that effect to the Planning Inspectorate. We expect that this evidence will be accepted.

Therefore the draft Local Plan allocates sufficient sites to meet the Government defined housing target for the next 15 years without allocating the Green Belt sites to the east of Coalpit Heath.

^{Published & promoted by South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats, 63 Broad St, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol, BS37 6AD.}