Leicestershire responds to Charnwood Local Consultation and Examination

The Branch has been very busy responding to the Charnwood Local Plan.

The main areas that the Branch was concerned with were related to the distribution of Leicester’s unmet housing needs, the plan’s vision, objectives and development strategy, Climate Change and the Natural Environment, housing numbers, needs and land supply as well as transport and infrastructure.

The Charnwood Local Plan was submitted for Examination on 3 December 2021. The submitted Plan proposed a planned review to deal with the issue of Leicester’s unmet housing need. During the first week of the hearing sessions which ran from 28 – 30 June 2022, the Council indicated that its position on that matter had changed. The Inspectors then adjourned the hearing sessions scheduled to allow for a period of consultation on the new evidence in relation to Leicester and Leicestershire’s Housing and Employment Land Needs.

We attended further hearing sessions in October 2022 on Leicester and Leicestershire Housing and Employment Land Needs and on Housing and Transport issues in February 2023 at Loughborough Town Hall.

Subsequent to the February hearings, the Inspectors have contacted Charnwood Council and are calling for further work on the plan. They have indicated that “based on all that we have read to date and heard at the hearing sessions, we consider that updates to the work in relation to Transport and Viability matters are necessary.”

In particular, they concluded that “the three Transport Strategies discussed as part of Matter 8 are not sufficiently detailed or developed to enable us to conclude that they will meet the Plan’s objective to increase the use of sustainable modes of travel, in addition to securing effective mitigation for the effects of the Plan’s growth on the Local and Strategic Road Network.”

CPRE Leicestershire in both our consultation in 2021 and in our submissions on Matter 8 on Transport had queried the effectiveness and the viability of the transport strategies and considered that the Plan had not really addressed the issue of sustainable modes of transport and the location of new developments.

We wait to hear responses from Charnwood Borough Council and Leicestershire County Council on these matters.

You can view our 2021 Consultation Response to the Charnwood Local Plan and our submissions to the Plan examination.