Planning Policy Consultation

The numbers of houses that should be built in the borough has previously been calcualted at a regional level, however this is soon to change due to changes in national government legislation. As a result it is down to Ribble Valley Borough Council to calculate a requirement for new housing (from 2008- 2028) based upon evidence, to ensure that there is enough housing in the borough to meet current and future need.

In forming a requirement number, the Council commissioned Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners (NLP) to look at all the evidence to examine what the housing requirement would be, based upon a number of scenarios. These ranged from the creation of lots of new jobs and the impact this would have on the requirement, to planning only for existing residents. Six scenarios were considered in total, creating a number of potential housing requirement figures. NLP have then made a recommendation based on the evidence for what they believe to be the way forward for the Ribble Valley, however comments are also being sought from interested parties.

All of this information, incuding comments made during the six weeks, will be made available to the Housing Review Sub Group and it will be from this information that a recommendation is made to the Planning and Development Committee for consideration and subsequently adoption and use in the Local Development Framework (LDF).

The full Housing Review report is a lengthy and technical piece of work that forms an important part of the LDF evidence base. Therefore, a Housing Requirement Review summary report has been produced which provides a summary of the main points, approaches and a series of FAQs about the work.

The Housing Numbers Review Consultation has now closed (the deadline for comments was 5pm 16th Decembver 2011)