Status of Local Development Plan to be known mid January

Formal confirmation has been made that the future of Wrexham’s Local Development Plan will be known in around four weeks time.

Following a fractious meeting earlier this month the inspectors of the plan promised a formal letter confirming that their deliberations would conclude around mid January on submissions made by Wrexham Council that could make or break the progress of the plan.

The promised letter from the inspectors of the LDP has been published, stating:

We are in receipt of your response to our letter dated 13 November 2020. Following the submission of that document, we will now consider whether it is possible that its content is sufficiently significant in terms of moving the Plan forward to warrant attention and potentially delay progress to the Plan to allow that to happen.

“If we find this to be the case, the principles of natural justice indicate that we would need to give interested parties a chance to respond to the submissions.

As verbally stated, we will advise you of our position in mid-January.

The consideration of the content of the council submission could be problematic, as it addressed errors raised by the inspectors. However, in the meeting the inspectors said “The sites that were given in our letter were examples, they are not necessarily a full list of all of the errors that have been identified.

“You have gone through that letter and revisited those sites. But of course, there may be other sites with errors on that we’ve just not picked up in that letter” noting “If there are significant factual errors, then how can we rely on the rest of the assessment as being accurate? I think that’s that’s the issue for us.”

Officially known as the “Wrexham Local Development Plan 2013 – 2028”, the first attempt at an LDP failed back in 2012 due to planning inspector concerns over the level of housing provision proposed within it.

Over the past few years a revised document, LDP2, has been drawn up, with an initial consultation taking place in 2016 and the mammoth process ongoing since then.

Last month the planning inspectors wrote a highly critical letter to Wrexham Council detailing ‘very serious reservations’ on parts of the plan, triggering the ‘Exploratory Meeting’ that then prompted this letter.