Evidence base - Housing and employment land studies
The council is carrying out a joint Strategic Housing Land
Availability Assessment (SHLAA) with Sefton and West Lancashire
Councils, in addition to a joint Employment Land and Premises Study
(EL&PS) with Halton Council.
This will identify land and premises suitable for either housing
or employment uses, or a mixture of the two, and assess how much
development each site can accommodate and when they are likely to
be delivered. They will inform preparation of the Local Development
Framework (LDF), a portfolio of documents introduced by the new
planning system.
Progress so far
The councils jointly undertook a 'Call for Sites' exercise to
inform the SHLAA and EL&PS between 25 October and 31 December
2007, in which we asked you to tell us about any sites or premises
you considered suitable for development.
Submissions to the ‘Call for Sites’ were also re-opened between
27th May and 18th July to allow individuals and organisations who
missed the original deadline to have their sites considered. This
represented a final chance to submit a site and the studies are now
closed to new submissions.
The 'Call for Sites' process does not imply any commitment by
the council that such sites will be reconsidered for development in
the future but that these sites will be judged against relevant
planning policies and other considerations in line with government
guidance.
Approximately 60 sites were submitted during the first 'Call for
Sites' by landowners and other interested parties. We have since
carried out an initial assessment of these submissions in addition
to a number of sites identified by ourselves.
Consultants have independently checked our assessments,
undertaken a review of all sites identified, and are preparing
draft findings for consultation. For the joint SHLAA they are
planning consultants White Young Green and for the joint EL&PS
planning and economic development consultants BE Group.
What happens next?
Unfortunately, the study has been subject to significant delays.
This has been due to a number of factors, particularly the high
number of sites identified (over 2000 housing sites in Sefton
alone) and unexpected circumstances which have significantly
increased workload pressures.
We now anticipate that the draft study reports will be available
towards the end of March 2009. The reports will contain
recommendations on the suitability of each site that has been
submitted to us. Following the production of the reports, a six
week public consultation will be held whereby members of the public
will be able to comment on the draft findings. Everyone who has
submitted a site to the studies, and other interested parties, will
be notified in writing prior to the consultation. Once the
consultation has closed, it will take at least four weeks to
consider all the comments and amend the reports, and we anticipate
that the final studies will then be published during summer
2009.
Meanwhile, the council can only apologise for the delays that
have been incurred, if you have any queries relating to these
matters should be addressed to the Forward Planning Team via the
contact details on the right.
Note
We will not release the results of site assessment for
individual sites until the consultants have completed their
independent assessment of all sites. Nor will we comment on
individual sites submitted under the ‘Call for Sites’ process until
the public consultation phase of the housing and employment land
studies.
