Woking 2027 - Planning the future of our Borough

Latest news!

  • The Pre-Hearing Meeting is scheduled for Thursday 9 February at 2pm in the Council Chamber, Civic Offices, Woking.

  • The Council submitted the Core Strategy to the Government on Friday 16 December 2011.

  • All details of the Examination, the right to participate and any documents submitted in connection with the Examination can be viewed on the Council's dedicated Woking 2027 website.

Woking 2027

Woking 2027 is the Council's name for the Local Development Framework - a new planning policy framework to guide future development in the Borough that will replace the existing Local Plan. Amongst other things, it looks at where jobs are created, where people can shop, where houses should be built and considers the attractiveness of local public space.

Core Strategy

The Council is required to produce a Core Strategy which will set out a vision and strategy for meeting known and anticipated development requirements to 2027.

This will include broad locations of where significant development will take place and policies against which planning applications will be determined, including an affordable housing policy.

However, it should be noted that it will not identify individual sites for development. This will be dealt with through the Site Allocations Development Plan Document (DPD) at a later stage in the process.

Stages of producing the Core Strategy

Details of the stages the Council has gone through to produce the Core Strategy Publication document and how stakeholders have been engaged at each stage are set out on the producing the Core Strategy page of the website.

The timetable for preparation of the Core Strategy, is included in the Local Development Scheme (LDS). The latest version of the LDS came into effect in October 2011

First Core Strategy

The Council submitted its first Core Strategy to the Government in October 2006. However, following the publication of new national planning policy, in July 2007 the Council received a formal direction to withdraw the Core Strategy from the examination process, so the document was never adopted.

Sustainability Appraisal

The Council must undertake a Sustainability Appraisal (SA) of each DPD including the Core Strategy. The purpose of SA is to ensure that the Council's policy approach is as sustainable as possible, balancing social, environmental and economic needs. The SA will identify and report on the likely significant effects of a DPD and the extent to which implementation of policies will achieve the social, economic and environmental objectives.

A consultation was undertaken on the Core Strategy Sustainability Appraisal Scoping report which ended on Friday 4 September 2009.

The Community Strategy and LDF objectives presented in the document have been assessed through the Sustainability Appraisal process. The findings of the Sustainability Appraisal were documented in the Initial SA Report which accompanies this document and is available for consultation for the same period.

Evidence base

The Core Strategy is supported by a Research and Evidence base produced by the Council and consultants appointed by them.

Further information is available from the Planning Policy team.