Cheshire East is busy preparing its new local plan and will be consulting with residents during the process.

Local democracy reporter Belinda Ryan spoke to council planners about the importance of a five-year-housing land supply, why Cheshire East no longer has one, and how a new local plan will put an end to the unwanted, speculative applications councillors currently have little option to refuse.

The local plan timetable and public consultation

Cheshire East's new local plan will set the vision for future development and help shape where new homes, jobs, schools, transport links, green spaces and community facilities should be located.

Importantly, it will form the basis for the council making decisions on planning applications into the 2040s.

This will finally put an end to councillors being forced to approve the speculative applications which have been flooding in because of the council doesn't have a five-year housing land supply.

Tom Evans, strategic and environmental planning man, said: "You're just in such a strong position to be in control of your own destiny when you've got that five-year supply. That's what the plan delivers ultimately."

Cheshire East carried out a 'scoping consultation' in the summer, giving people the opportunity to share their views on the key issues, challenges and opportunities that should shape the plan.

The council sought feedback on a range of topics, including housing, employment, transport, community infrastructure, climate change, the natural environment, heritage, health and wellbeing.

It has undertaken two call-for-sites exercises in 2024 and 2026 which returned 597 sites – it is important to stress no sites have been decided on at this stage.

And at the end of this month, following cabinet approval yesterday (Thursday), the council will publish the 'gateway one self-assessment' on its website and formally commence the 30-month local plan preparation process.

Mr Evans said: "In preparing a local plan, the evidence base is a web of different bits of information and studies that feed through that we've got to assess and talk through with officers, with members, with communities, with stakeholders to get to a point where we can pick a position and say this is a direction of travel…

"Between now and gateway two, we've got to work out the sort of core structure of the plan, so that's our vision and our strategic objectives and our measurable outcomes.

"That creates the shape of the plan."

The next consultation point will be at 'gateway two' around July next year.

"So, at that point, we will publish our spatial options and our preferred approach," he said.

During the 30-month process there will be public engagement.

Mr Evans said: "A formal consultation will be in July, but we've got some informal ones, particularly our community assemblies.

"Between now and the formal consultation, there will be at least one more community assembly, if not two."

Councillor Mick Warren (Ind), portfolio holder for planning, housing and regeneration, said getting the new local plan right is 'absolutely critical'.

"The plan should identify where growth can be accommodated sustainably, where infrastructure needs to be improved, what land and communities need protecting, and what types of homes our residents actually need," he said.

He said input from the community, particularly younger people, is essential.

"This cannot be a plan designed behind closed doors," said councillor Warren.

"I want local people to help shape the future of Cheshire East.

"Residents know their communities. They know where roads are already under pressure, where schools and health services need investment, what areas should be protected and where carefully planned development could work."

Mr Evans said the plan has to be 'sound' to be approved by an inspector.

"It's all got to add up to something that makes sense, and that's where, at the end of it, the inspector will examine the plan for its soundness," he said.

Head of planning David Malcolm, said: "We're trying to create better places, and we're trying to improve things for people.

"For me, it's about places and communities, not just about housing estates, that's what the plan-making is all about. "

He said planning and plan-led development was bringing everything together, so it worked.

"We're consulting with health colleagues, energy, water, everyone basically, as part of the local plan," he said.

"It's consulting with all these different parties, and we bring them all together so that when they do come in with that housing scheme, they'll have the power for it, they'll have the water for it."

Cheshire East will advertise when public consultations and assemblies take place.

The local plan is expected to be adopted in Spring 2029.

Why doesn't Cheshire East have a five-year housing land supply and why it is important

National planning policy states councils should be able to provide at least five years' housing land supply.

Until December 2024 when the government moved the goalposts and Cheshire East's housing target soared by 41 per cent above the current local plan target to 2,530 per year, the council had well in excess of the required five-year supply.

Now it has just 3.3 years and the fallout from that is:

• it's more difficult to refuse planning applications for housing, even where proposals are not supported by local planning policies;
• developers are more likely to succeed when appealing planning decisions because of the need for housing;
• development might be approved in locations where it would not normally be supported, unless there are very strong planning reasons to refuse it.

David Malcolm, head of planning, said: "Overnight we went from a really healthy 11-plus year supply of housing to 3.8."

That figure has since dropped to 3.3 years, despite several applications for hundreds of homes being approved in the past few months alone.

Mr Malcolm said: "It's about delivery within a five-year timeframe.

"If you approve an application for 500 houses, as we have done in recent committees for example, that doesn't mean that those 500 houses go straight into the supply.

"If it's 500 houses, there's a time to discharge conditions, there's a period of time to get on to site, start the ground works to clear the site, put in infrastructure, drainage, so generally speaking, you probably lose about 12 months.

"So, you don't start for 12 months and then, if you're building out only 30 or 40 dwellings a year over that five-year period, you're only going to get to something around about 200, maybe, if you're lucky.

"So, of those 500 dwellings approved, we may only count 200 into the supply."

The council also can't force developers to start building once permission has been granted.

Councillor Warren is clearly unhappy with the situation Cheshire East finds itself in – through no fault of its own.

"The crux of it is that rise in the housing land supply," he said.

"Prior to that, we had a healthy land supply, we had a local plan that was delivering on target, and all of a sudden we fell off a cliff.

"We're not going to get our housing land supply up to what the government wanted at around 2,600 a year, because the developers won't build them, and we can't make them build them.

"So, the next two and a half years until our plan gets adopted, we're really going to have to approve probably applications that don't fit within the local plan."

How speculative applications are causing delays in building-out developments

You only have to attend a planning meeting or scroll through social media to see the impact speculative applications are having on the lives of local residents.

They see the prospect of the open countryside and green belt vanishing forever as land promoters and developers cash in on the fact Cheshire East doesn't have a five-year housing land supply.

And because these applications are for sites which haven't been allocated in the current local plan, this creates an extra headache for council planners and can delay them being built out – which, in turn, has an adverse impact on the council's housing land supply figures.

David Malcolm, head of planning, said: "If applications come through for sites which are in the local plan they are easier to approve because they're being looked at in the round.

"The infrastructure is easier to deal with because we've already looked at what infrastructure is required, what roads are required, what schools, so that's when you see those processes working well.

"What you see at the moment is this unplanned situation where you've got a piecemeal application-by-application basis.

"We are on the back foot from a policy perspective, so we are in a situation that means that we're just not able to deal with them as quickly as we would like, which then brings its own problems because these applications are sat there for a long period of time.

"This causes that feeling of uncertainty for residents.

"They see an application coming in, but it might be 12 months before you see a decision on that application, because of the fact that both the developer and ourselves are working the issues through to a situation where we can actually make that scheme as good as it can be from an officer perspective."

He added there's some sites currently delayed because they haven't got a power supply – one of the things which would have been taken into account in plan-led development.

Councillor Warren said there is no question Cheshire East needs more homes, but they need to be properly planned for.

"My concern is that putting a much bigger number into the national planning system doesn't, by itself, create more houses.

"There is a difference between setting a housing target and actually delivering homes," he said

"We have to consider whether there is sufficient land, infrastructure, highways capacity, schools, healthcare, water and other services to support that growth.

"I also don't want Cheshire East's future to be determined by speculative development simply because we are temporarily unable to demonstrate five years' supply against a dramatically increased national target."