Sites sorely needed

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Landowners, developers, site promoters and individuals are being invited to suggest sites across the borough that might be suitable for future development.

The Local Plan is being prepared and the Council has opened a new ‘Call for Sites’. This is to inform and refresh the Local Plan evidence base and ensure the information remains up-to-date.

Councillor David Reeve, Chair of the Licensing and Planning Policy Committee, said “The Call for Sites is a part of the process required by central government in the preparation of our new Local Plan.

“We are committed to ensuring that our Local Plan is sustainable, and that sufficient infrastructure is provided to support it. Land will be needed for a wide range of uses, so people are invited to propose locations that could be used for housing and economic purposes”.

Sites should only be put forward with the owners’ permission. Submissions are invited until 27 March 2022

All of the sites put forward will be assessed for their suitability, availability and achievability for future development in due course. There is no guarantee that any site put forward through process will ultimately be developed, given constraints such as environmental sensitivity, infrastructure capacity, etc

Councillor Reeve added “Epsom and Ewell is a popular place to live. One aim of a new Local Plan is to set out how the borough will meet the challenge of delivering the government’s required increase in new homes in the most sustainable way.

“We want to include the borough’s communities in this process. The council must demonstrate that it has followed a logical approach to finding sites and narrowing down ones that are not suitable – the more options the council can demonstrate it has considered, the stronger its argument for the number of homes it is planning to build”

The Local Plan is a document which sets out planning policies and proposals for new development. When it is adopted, the Epsom and Ewell Local Plan will be used to help determine planning applications in the Borough.

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