Buckinghamshire Local Plan Watch - Spring 2022

Work on new Local Plans in the first half of 2022 have and continue to emerge across both Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire through Call for Sites.

With Milton Keynes’ Call for Sites which closed on 20th April 2022, Buckinghamshire Council have now recently announced a Call for Sites which will be undertaken in May/June 2022 (dates yet to be confirmed) which extends to Greenfield sites, as it is clear that the supply from Brownfield sites across the County will not be sufficient enough to meet the housing and employment development needs over the next plan period.

It will be important to identify through representations to these Call for Sites, some of the key challenges the previous Authority areas faced, including some of the issues raised by the Inspectors through the examination of the now adopted Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan (VALP) and the withdrawn Chiltern & South Bucks Local Plan. It is clear that more land, likely at both a strategic scale and through smaller & medium sized development allocations, will need to be identified to meet ongoing current and future needs.

As new Local Plans move forward, there will also need to be collaboration between Milton Keynes Council and Buckinghamshire Council to ensure the spatial strategy in the north of the County accounts for commuting flows to and from Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes is already exploring potential growth options around the grid system expansion and new transit-orientated communities alongside intensification within the city up to a period to 2050, including potential growth options beyond the Council’s administrative boundaries into neighbouring Buckinghamshire.

For detail on emerging Local Plan position in every authority please click on the map below.