NEW parish-by-parish rural housing targets for the county are pitched into Herefordshire Council’s election campaign  from today (Friday).

Parishes should know of their new allocations - re-assessed as modifications to the county’s core strategy plan to 2031 - by Monday.

The strategy’s overall rural housing target of 5,300 homes stays unchanged.

Crucial to council candidates are the revised figures for individual parishes.

Now, the numbers are based on parish household figures as a whole rather than those for settlements.

In releasing the new targets,  council planners warn against figures being circulated by “various sources” that should be “treated with caution” as not calculated from a correct base point.

The new targets will now be based on household information as at April 2011 – the strategy’s starting point – allowing planning permissions granted and/or houses built since that time to be discounted.

Though the council acknowledges that the impact of the proposed modifications will vary from parish to parish, it says, in most cases, emerging neighbourhood plans will only need “refinement” rather than rewriting.

The modifications emerge out of the February’s examination hearings into the strategy.

There, the Inspector, and some objectors, raised concerns about rural housing delivery during the hearing sessions and in earlier written representations.

The Inspector recognised the coverage of neighbourhood plans she questioned their ability to deliver the extent of rural housing required  and suggested “modifications”.

A key element of the issue is the countywide roll out of the neighbourhood planning agenda.

Given the future extensive coverage of the county by neighbourhood plans, the Inspector wanted assurance as to how these plans would contribute to - and underpin – the 5,300 home target.

Though that 5,300 target stays as submitted,  modifications made in response to the Inspector’s concerns put more emphasis on the designation of settlement boundaries, and the use of allocations in neighbourhood plans rather than criteria based policies and proportional growth figures based on parish household figures rather than settlement household figures.

As intended, the changes allow more flexibility to parishes in determining the distribution of housing growth while accounting for localised environmental issues and specific community settlement characteristics.  

Housing growth figures for neighbourhood plans will, then, be an indicative target.

Conformity with core strategy policies can be tested at each examination into specific neighbourhood plans by independent examiners.

To planners, the modifications do not alter the general approach to  the distribution or type of housing growth anticipated for rural parishes, with the impact of any variance being felt parish to parish.

 The neighbourhood planning team is already allocating assistance to parishes close to submitting their plans for examination.

Local Plan Modifications – Key Points

- The rural housing target remains unchanged at 5,300.

- New builds & permissions granted since April 2011 are included in the 5,300 rural target

- Neighbourhood plans to identify minimum levels of new development in each parish.

- New development to be focused within, or adjacent to, existing settlements

- Neighbourhood plan growth targets are indicative. Local evidence & environmental factors will determine the appropriate scale of development.