STEPS to prepare a joint development plan setting out where new housing and employment sites should be in two Gwent boroughs have been approved.
The Welsh Government has already agreed Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent borough councils could scrap the local development plans they had been separately preparing before both authorities agreed a range of areas and ways in which they would work closer together.
The joint local development plan is intended to guide development through to 2041 and it’s intended the councils will, this November, be able to set out to the Welsh Government how they will put it together, following a public consultation.
With the government’s approval they would then ask landowners and others to put forward plots to be considered as candidate sites for inclusion in the development plan from January 2027.
The councils will also consider the “vision and objectives” and other aims of the plan, such as housing targets, before deciding on an agreed strategy in January 2028 which would then be subject to a public consultation in February and March.
Following the legal publishing, or “statutory deposit”, of the proposals in March or April 2028 the councils would consider responses before holding a required six week public consultation in November and December 2028.
It would be intended to submit the plan to the Welsh Government for approval by July 2029 which would then allow for it to be examined by an independent inspector, to ensure it is “sound” and meets national policy, The examination would include public hearings.
The councils could then consider the inspector’s report in May 2030 and be in position to approve the plan as their formal planning policy from June that year.
Torfaen councillors approved the draft joint local plan delivery agreement at their July meeting and were told their counterparts in Blaenau Gwent had done the same a week earlier.
Torfaen also agreed to the joint development plan, as Blaenau Gwent members had, and named seven councillors to sit on a joint planning policy panel, with councillors from Blaenau Gwent, to oversee preparation of the plan and comment on its development, though it will not be a decision making body.
The seven Torfaen councillors to sit on the panel are Stuart Ashley, Linda Clarkson, Steve Evans and David Williams from the Labour group, Elizabeth Haynes and Janet Jones from the two independent groups and Reform UK’s Alan Slade.