Sites for at least 1,200 home in 48 ‘clusters’ across 58 sites agreed by South Norfolk Council cabinet
South Norfolk Council’s Village Cluster Housing Allocation Plan has been agreed by the council’s cabinet.
It will now go before the full council in July to get approval for the document to be submitted to the Secretary of State.
The Village Clusters Housing Allocations Plan is part of the Greater Norwich Local Plan and, if approved, will be a new Local Plan document, allocating sites for a minimum of 1,200 homes in villages across South Norfolk.
The villages and parishes have been divided into 48 different clusters. These clusters are largely based on primary school catchment areas and factors including access to local services and facilities, the suitability of local roads, and the risk of flooding are key considerations in deciding which sites have been identified for development.
Due to the rural characteristics of South Norfolk’s villages, in most cases, sites allocated through the plan are smaller in size, typically being capable of accommodating between 12 to 50 homes. Sites have been distributed as widely as possible across suitable villages in order to achieve a variety of housing opportunities for different people, help provide opportunities for small and medium sized builders and promote the vitality the rural areas by supporting rural services.
Larger sites have been proposed where they offer the opportunity to achieve particular benefits that could not be achieved through a smaller site, where a site needs to provide significant infrastructure improvements or in circumstances where a small uplift on housing numbers is required to ensure that overall housing needs are met.
The Village Clusters Housing Allocations Plan allocates 58 sites for development in total, out of approximately 500 sites that were put forward for consideration, some of which were originally submitted for consideration as part of work to produce the Greater Norwich Local Plan.
There have been 4 different periods of publication and consultation on the plan to get to this point:
• Regulation 18 (effectively an ‘issues and options’ consultation) in summer 2021
• Regulation 19 in spring 2023
• Regulation 18 Alternative Sites and Focused Changes (to assess a limited number of alternative options following a small number of changes that occurred to the preferred sites post the 2023 Regulation-19) in early 2024
• Regulation 19 Focused Changes (confirming the amendments to made to the Plan, including 1 new site and some changes in site numbers/ densities) in autumn 2024.
If approved by Full Council it is hoped that the Planning Inspector’s examination will take place in the autumn.