Background to Local Plans

As a result of the Town and Country Planning Regulations (2012) the planning system has been updated. What was previously known as the St Edmundsbury Local Development Framework (LDF) will now be known as the St Edmundsbury Local Plan. The 2012 Regulations and the introduction of the National Planning Policy Framework in March 2012 aims to simplify the complex nature of plans, speed up the process of creating them, and get the community more involved in the process.

Development Plan Documents

You can find out more about each of St Edmundsbury’s Development Plan Documents below:

• The Core Strategy document was adopted in December 2010. It looks at key issues such as what housing and other land uses should be planned for, the role of the various settlements, how we can protect the environment and reduce the impacts of climate change.
  
  
• The joint St Edmundsbury Borough Council and Forest Heath District Council Development Management Policies Local Plan document includes numerous policies which will, when adopted, form an important tool for the day-to-day determination of planning applications submitted to the borough council. The policies will supersede many of the those included in the adopted Replacement Local Plan and complement, rather than repeat, national and regional planning policies.
  
  
• The Vision 2031 Local Plan documents document will identify individual sites for specific uses to deliver the Core Strategy. Sites will be identified for development based on a range of planning criteria. The Proposals Map will show on an ordnance survey based map the sites identified for future development and the areas to which the policies apply.
  
  
• The Local Development Scheme is the project plan which sets out our three year timetable for producing our planning documents.
  
  
• The Statement of Community Involvement sets out how we intend to involve the community in preparing the new documents and in the consideration of planning applications.
  
  
• An Annual Monitoring Report is produced each year and shows how we are keeping to our programme and if the plan's policies are achieving their objectives.
  
  
• In support of planning policy the council has commissioned and undertaken a number of evidence-based studies

Section 39 (2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires that development plan documents are subject to Sustainability Appraisal. The purpose of a sustainability appraisal is to promote sustainable development through the better integration of sustainability considerations into the preparation and adoption of the documents.

A scoping report is required as the first stage of this process to provide a baseline for the appraisal of the development plan documents in the LDF:

• Final scoping report (PDF 351Kb) 
• Appendix to scoping report (PDF 531Kb) 

If you require further information about specific parts of the Local Plan, we are here to help and you can contact us during normal office hours on 01284 757368 or email LDF@stedsbc.gov.uk