Local Plan Supporting Documents - HRA and SA

Object

Representation ID: 6970

Received: 05/01/2024

Respondent: Cora Homes Limited

Agent: Jeakins Weir

Five growth options are considered by the SA with a number of sites considered across all five options. Quarry Farm (North of Stamford), for example, is a constant across all five options despite this site having no pre-existing planning status other than an undetermined planning application. Allocations within the Uppingham Neighbourhood Plan review are also treated as a constant across all of the options, despite the fact that examination of the Neighbourhood Plan has yet to conclude. Other sites include the Officers Mess at Edith Weston, despite falling outside of settlement boundaries and not having any pre-existing planning status. This does not represent a testing of genuine reasonable alternatives but rather different permutations of what is fundamentally the same spatial strategy. That problem is amplified by the fact that only a handful of rural settlements have been selected as playing host to development across all five growth options, and these all happen to be locations where the preferred strategy is apportioning growth.
There is similarly little clarity within the SA as to why some villages have been selected for testing as part of the overall spatial strategy whilst others in the same tier of the settlement hierarchy have simply been ignored. Given that many of the locations ignored happen to be Rutland’s larger rural settlements, it is hard to see how the SA has informed a sustainable pattern of growth that represents the most appropriate strategy when assessed against the reasonable alternatives.

The SA does not present an appropriately robust testing of the preferred spatial strategy against the reasonable alternatives and that therefore the emerging local plan’s spatial strategy is not justified.