Issue - meetings

Report of Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control, Councillor Mike Collins

RESOLVED THAT:

1.    the prepared Housing Delivery Test Action Plan, June 2025, is approved for publication;

2.    authority is delegated to the Director of Community and Economic Development, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control, to prepare the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP) for publication correcting any minor errors;

3.    any future updates to the HDTAP are delegated to the Director of Community and Economic Development, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control.

The Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control introduced his report, saying it is important to CBC and Cheltenham residents, and vital to the successful and sustainable growth of the town. He said the requirement for an action plan was first introduced in 2019, to provide an annual measurement over a three-year rolling period, and the report shows that Cheltenham is meeting its challenging housing delivery targets. 

The council has worked in collaboration with its JCS colleagues and other partners, and he thanked officers who have managed to make the incredible amount of detail in this very technical report as easy to understand as possible.   

In response to Members’ questions, the Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control and the Director of Community and Economic Development confirmed that:

-       the outline permission for 4000+ houses at Elms Park is not included in the action plan, as that consent is subject to an S106 agreement and a decision notice won’t be issued until that is achieved.  This needs to be built into the programme of work;

-       the paper presented is based on a three-year rolling programme applied by the government, which looks back at historical data rather than projecting forward.  It is likely that the Housing Delivery Action Plan will need to be live for a couple of years to enable the strategic sites to catch up. The Elms Park numbers will be taken into account for monitoring the five-year land supply but this report is based on completions;

-       regarding new measures coming forward to track permissions once granted, how long a developer has to start work before the permission lapses, and what the impact of this may be on the planning department’s workload, this will be discussed with the Head of Planning to consider national guidance and what other local authorities are doing, see if any patterns are emerging around particular developers, and consider the best action for CBC.

RESOLVED THAT:

1.    the prepared Housing Delivery Test Action Plan, June 2025, is approved for publication;

2.    authority is delegated to the Director of Community and Economic Development, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control, to prepare the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP) for publication correcting any minor errors;

3.    any future updates to the HDTAP are delegated to the Director of Community and Economic Development, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Planning and Building Control.