Agenda item

To consider the report of the Director City Development and Housing.

The Assistant Service Lead (Local Plan) presented the report and referred to the Council’s consultation on a Full Draft of the emerging Exeter Plan, the new Local Plan for the city. This was held between September 2023 and January 2024. Since the consultation closed, the Local Plans Team has been undertaking early evaluation of the consultation responses received. This report provided an initial summary of this work with a fuller analysis of the consultation to be reported to the Executive in April.

The report referred to the nature of the consultation and the activities undertaken. This included 15 exhibitions/events along with an online engagement platform, as well as new engagement activity to engender further interest such as coffee mornings, quick questions, Instagram reels and an audio version of the consultation available online for the first time. Nearly 2,900 individual responses were received from over 1,100 respondents and around 500 people attended the exhibitions and more than 100 at the coffee mornings. There were also 11,900 hits on the web site.

The analysis showed that 41 out of the 61 policies were generally well received. The policies receiving most comments related to the overall strategy, sustainable transport, the Liveable Exeter principles, housing requirements and net zero. The policies with the fewest comments were on employment and culture. Comments were made on sites identified in the Plan with the development site at Exe Bridges retail park having by the far the largest number of comments followed by the Liveable Exeter sites of Water Lane, East Gate, North Gate, Marsh Barton and South Gate. There were four sites (all brownfield) which received at least 50% positive responses. There were five sites to which over 70% of respondents provided negative responses. Four of these sites are greenfield, with the other being at Exe Bridges retail park.

The report also included a brief comparison of the engagement levels from last year’s outline draft Plan. The consultation on the Full Draft Plan received fewer responses from a smaller number of respondents.

The following responses were given to Members’ enquiries:-

·      a summary of changes made to the Plan following consultation will accompany the next version but this won’t respond to each comment individually because of the volume of work that would entail.

·      compared to many local authorities the Council has carried out a comprehensive consultation with 15 exhibitions across a compact geographical area.

·      there was an interesting dynamic between the two consultations – consultation context is likely to have an impact on how people respond.

·      there were general comments received relating to concerns over development as a whole while some respondents assumed that high density development means student accommodation. There were also assumptions made that taller buildings proposed would be a lot higher than would be acceptable in reality.  

·      the consultation had reached out widely across the city and accessed different communities through the variety of activity. The greatest number of respondents were from the 45 and 54 years age group. Responses to similar consultations by neighbouring authorities often see larger numbers of responses from older age groups. Accessing younger age groups on planning issues is difficult but using social media aims to encourage greater interest. There is also a set of Liveable Exeter lesson plans online which has been put together by the planning team and Building Greater Exeter to attract greater interest in development and planning more generally.

The next steps will include the Local Plan team analysing the responses in more detail to inform the next version of the Plan which will be the final draft before submission. The next draft will be reported to the Strategic Scrutiny Committee in September and the Executive in the autumn.

Strategic Scrutiny Committee noted the summary of the Full Draft Exeter Plan consultation, as included in this report.