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 2026.

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.

The Council submitted it's first Core Strategy to the Government in October 2006.  Following an exploratory meeting, the Inspector wrote to the Council and set out his concerns in relation to the Core Strategy.  Although the Inspector did not state that he considered the Core Strategy to be unsound he identified that it was likely to require significant amendments to make it sound.  The Inspector warned that it may not be possible to make such amendments through the examination process.

Therefore the Council had the option of either proceeding with the examination of the Core Strategy or seeking to withdraw it.  At the meeting of the Executive on 7 June 2007 it was decided that the best course of action would be to seek approval from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to withdraw the document.  A formal request was made to the Government Office for the South East.

On 2 July 2007 the Council recieved a formal direction to withdraw the Core Strategy from the examination process.

The timetable for preparation of a new Core Strategy, is included in the Local Development Scheme (LDS) which was approved by the Council's Executive and the Government Office for the South East in  November 2007.

Further information is available from the Planning Policy team.