Joint Spatial Plan - Technical Evidence Work Consultation, November 2018

The four West of England Councils (Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire) submitted the West of England Joint Spatial Plan (JSP) to the Secretary of State on April 13, 2018. On this date the JSP entered its examination phase.

The JSP is the first such joint planning approach in England, which sees councils working together. Its purpose is to provide a strategic, overarching vision and framework to help deliver the number of new homes, land for employment purposes and the supporting infrastructure that we anticipate will be needed over the next 20 years. The JSP will provide a strategy to inform the review of the councils’ own Local Plans.

The plan sets out the policies and principles for determining the most appropriate and sustainable locations for future development in order to meet the region’s housing, employment and transport needs for the next 20 years, to 2036. This plan will sit above and guide each Council’s own Local Plan.

Since the Plan was submitted, the two Independent Planning Inspectors were appointed by the Secretary of the State and have been in correspondence with the Councils over points of clarification on the submitted JSP. Full details of these communications can be viewed online under the JSP examination webpage.

Further information is being published by the four councils as part of the examination process and in keeping with our approach through the preparation of the JSP, additional and updated evidence will be published on Monday 12 November 2018, with the exception of the Updated Habitats Regulations Assessment which will be published on Monday 26 November. All documents will be available for comments to be made until Monday 7 January 2019.

Additional Technical Evidence

• WED 001 - November Consultation Explanatory Note
• WED 002 - Schedule of Proposed Changes
• WED 003 - Duty to Cooperate Paper
• WED 004 - Justification of the requirements for the 12 Strategic Development Locations Policy 7-7.12
• WED 005 - Updated Viability Assessment
• WED 006 - Updated Employment Evidence
• WED 007 - Transport Topic Paper 8 (update Nov 2018)
• WED 008 - Emerging Findings Transport Report (Nov 2018)
• WED 009 - Consolidated Sustainability Appraisal Report (Nov 2018)
• WED 010 - Updated Habitats Regulations Assessment (available from Monday 26th November)

Tell Us Your Views

The public consultation on these documents runs from Monday 12th November until Monday 7th January.

Click here to respond to the consultation.

Please do take the opportunity to comment online, this ensures that your comments will be dealt with in the most efficient way possible.

Further assistance to access these technical documents is available in council offices, one stop shops and main libraries in Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

We are now in week six of the consultation. Representations are coming in and we are beginning the process of registering and identifying the key issues. To ensure that we can do this as quickly as possible please submit your comments online as this really helps.

Please note that this consultation closed on Monday 7 January 2019.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about making a consultation submission please email info@jointplanningwofe.org.uk.

Next steps

Once the consultation closes on Monday 7 January 2019, the four council's will begin to produce a key issues report, which will include consultation comments received and a short response from the Council's, which will be circulated to the Inspectors.

All comments and views submitted will be taken into account by the Inspectors as they prepare for Examination (EiP) hearings, which are intended to take place in spring 2019.

All comments made on the Technical Evidence Work Consultation will be published online in due course. Please note that responses received, including personal details e.g. full name, cannot be kept confidential and will be made publicly available. However, key information such as contact details will be redacted.

To continue to be on the JSP mailing list and receive future JSP updates please opt into the JSP mailing list webpage

For more information on data protection for the four councils please visit our Data Protection and Privacy Notices page.