What is a CALL FOR SITES and why is it important?
Posted on 10th December 2024 at 15:38
National Planning Policy, which is created and managed by the Government of the day, dictates that every Local Planning Authority (LPA) across the UK is required to produce a Local Plan every 5 years. This ensures that land is being identified for development within a managed process, involving consultation with all relevant stakeholders.
The first stage is for each council to prepare a Local Development Scheme which sets out its timetable for preparation of its local plan including key milestones, such as CFS and draft local plan. They tend to engage with engaged members of the development community such as house building companies, commerical developers, planning consultants and land agents such as Landscope.
An early stage in the process is for the LPA to flush out all potential sites from which they can build their plan. This is known as a CALL FOR SITES when they invite developers, agents and landowners of potential sites to submit key plans and documents so that the site can be considered for commercial, recreational or residential development.
How is the site assessed?
Each site is then assessed, through key techinical planning criteria to establish its viability for development in the short or longer term. Assessment criteria cover a wide range of issues: size/potential capacity of the site, flood risk and other environmental considerations, current development status (greenfield or brownfield), does it have any national designations, what infrastructure is available, is the site available for development, is it suitable for development within national planning policy, the quality of the site, is it sustainable through infrastructure and accessibility, as well as its planning history.
What is the commitment?
This process does not commit the site in any way, or the landowner/developer, but does give a clear indication of its planning potential and sometimes as importantly, what barriers might need to be overcome for the site to be developed at some point in the future. It may also improve its appeal to potential purchasers of the site, increasing its value (although, also importantly, until a site actually has outline planning permission, which would take some time, the value for tax purposes is still whatever the use is currently eg. agricultural or business use (brownfield)).
How does it fit in the Planning Process?
Stage 1 > Issues & Options Stage creates the Vision and Strategy. LPA engage key stakeholders, including members of the planning and development community, such as us
Stage 2 > Call for Sites (above) - landowners/developers/agents submit sites for assessment
Stage 3 > The LPA assess each submitted site against their full set of technical criteria
Stage 4 > Assessment results for each are issued, by Parish or Town Council Area
Stage 5 > LPA create a draft Local Plan, including sites from the CFS which they are earmarking for development
Stage 6 > Consultation process to enable feedback from all stakeholders (including those who have submitted sites)
Stage 7 > Final version of the Local Plan is issued and submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for examination.
If a site is not allocated in the new Local Plan, but has passed the technical criteria, it still stands a better chance of development over the life of the 5 year plan, if an opportunity arises to submit a site outside the Adopted Local Plan, so every stage of the promotion process is worth pursuing in order to move a site forward.
How we can help
At Landscope, with our Planning Consultancy, Land Agency and Land Promotion capabilities, we can help landowners and developers with sites across the region to promote sites through the local plan process and outside it. Because of that, we constantly monitor all Local Development Scheme timetables across Councils within the Northern Home Counties, to ensure we keep up to date with all of their Calls for Sites so that our clients don't miss out on any opportunites!
This is a free service: just follow our social media channels to make sure you keep up to date too!
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