Site Allocations and Development Policies Document

The Local Plan Strategy is the first part of the new Local Plan to be adopted. This Site Allocations and Development Policies Document will form the second part of the Local Plan. It will:

Allocate additional sites for development to make sure that the overall development requirements set out in the Local Plan Strategy are met. These allocations will generally be ‘non-strategic’ sites, less than 5 hectares in size (or 150 homes). Allocations will be for housing, employment, retail, leisure and other types of development.
Set more detailed policies to guide decisions on planning applications in the Borough. Land that needs particular protection will be designated, for example because of its importance to wildlife or the historic environment.

Current status

The Site Allocations and Development Policies Document is currently in preparation.

An initial consultation on the Site Allocations and Development Policies Issues Paper took place between 27 February and 10 April 2017, alongside a separate ‘call for sites’ exercise to inform the allocation of development sites.

The production of the SADPD will be informed by Sustainability Appraisal, to assess its social, environmental and economic impacts. A Draft SA Scoping Report (identifying the scope and methodology for the Sustainability Appraisal) was also the subject of consultation between 27 February and 10 April 2017. The updated SA Scoping Report has now been published and can be downloaded from the Local Plan Sustainability Appraisal page.

We have now published the Report of Consultation on the SADPD Issues Paper (PDF, 2.6 MB).

A report seeking approval to consult on the First Draft SADPD will be considered at the Strategic Planning Board Meeting on 29 August 2018. We expect that consultation will begin in early September.

Call for sites

We carried out a ‘call for sites’ exercise between 27 February and 10 April 2017 when we asked landowners, developers and other interested parties to submit sites for consideration. This call for sites period has now ended and we have considered all the information provided, to inform the proposed allocation of sites in the first draft SADPD .

There was also a further opportunity to send late submissions until the end of June 2017 and all those late submissions received before the end of June 2017 were also considered.

Further information

A number of saved policies from the Congleton Local Plan, Crewe and Nantwich Local Plan, Macclesfield Local Plan, Cheshire Waste Plan and Cheshire Minerals Plan will continue to be used until the SADPD and MWDPD have been adopted.

Regular updates on SADPD progress are available in our Spatial Planning Update.