By Isle of Wight Observer
After spending seven years, and £600,000, the Isle of Wight Council last week approved the Draft Island Planning Strategy to move to the next stage.
The Island’s new ‘planning bible’, was passed on Wednesday by 27 votes to 10, with one abstention. It will shortly go back for public comment for six weeks, and will then be passed to the government, who will appoint a planning inspector to assess it, consider all comments, arrange any necessary public meetings and produce a final report.
The council will then be given the chance to adopt the local plan based, on the inspector’s recommendations.
Although the plan covers all aspects of development on the Island until 2038, including the environment, business, transport and the economy, the most contentious issue throughout has been the housing numbers.
The current plan has a housing figure of 453 homes per year, almost 40 per cent lower than the figure arrived at using the government’s standard methodology. Although all councillors agreed that it was ‘not perfect’, it tackles a number of issues such as providing ‘Island affordable’ homes, and ensuring that any new developments support the council’s climate and environment strategy.
Councillors hoping that a government footnote in the National Planning Policy Framework, which mentioned the possibility of ‘exceptional circumstances’ for Islands with high elderly populations, they were disappointed when specialist legal, demographic and planning advice. Using exceptional circumstances to revise the plan could give rise to a higher housing number than even the government’s standard target.
Since 2022 the Island has been subject to the ‘tilted balance’, or presumption of sustainable development, meaning that in many cases national policies are applied rather than local ones; now that the Draft Island Plan has been approved by the council, the Island Plan will carry more weight.
