The Society has responded to the latest consultation on the Local Plan Review. This consultation covers only certain themes, not the whole Local Plan, building on the 2018/19 consultations. Some of the subject areas of most interest to the Society have been covered in 2019, and others have been deferred to the Publication Version next summer. The current consultation covers 7 themes including housing need, net zero, ‘Shopping, centres and the evening economy’
The Local Plan is a huge and important document with wide scope, and the Society’s consultation response is also long! In our response, we did not confine ourselves to commenting on the consultation documents: we took a step back to consider how some of the big planning issues are covered in the emerging Local Plan as a whole, including tensions between policy objectives.
The headlines of our response are that:
- the Plan is not demonstrably consistent with the national and Bristol net zero targets.
- the Plan does not meet the requirements of national policy on carbon implications, good design, community involvement in good design locally, deficiency of open space.
- the Plan gives insufficient guidance on managing the tension between policy aims, for example: density vs liveability and other policy aims, and land for housing vs other uses.
Alan Morris
Bristol Civic Society full response