Local Plan Supporting Documents - HRA and SA

Object

Representation ID: 7349

Received: 08/01/2024

Respondent: Jeakins Weir

Agent: Jeakins Weir

The preferred spatial strategy has been tested alongside other reasonable alternatives by the Sustainability Appraisal Report to Accompany the Preferred Options Consultation Document produced by AECOM.
Five growth options are considered by the SA with a number of sites considered across all five options, that 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. The emerging local plan has opted to direct significant growth to settlements that are ranked as “larger villages,” but which are demonstrably less sustainable than other settlements within that same rung of the hierarchy and which are less sustainable than the main town of Oakham.
Therefore, 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.