Agenda item

Report from the Interim Strategic Director of Regeneration and Environment.

Recommendations:

1.    That Cabinet recommends to Council that the revised Local Development Scheme be adopted at the next available meeting.

Consideration was given to the report which outlined the revised Local Development Scheme (LDS). The LDS set out a project plan for the preparation, adoption and review of Rotherham Local Plan documents. The revised LDS, attached to the report at Appendix 1, would amend the timetable for the partial update of the Local Plan Core Strategy and include the preparation of a South Yorkshire Joint Waste Plan.

It was important that the Council adopted a realistic and achievable programme for the Core Strategy Partial Update. The process of adopting the plan would involve examination by the Planning Inspectorate; one of the legal compliance checks by the inspector was that the document had been produced in conformity with the timetable set out in the LDS. Milestones for the Core Strategy Partial Update were summarised in paragraph 2.3 of the report.

In relation to the South Yorkshire Joint Waste Plan, the report stated that all waste planning authorities were legally required to have an up-to-date development plan including policies covering the strategic planning policy requirements for waste. The waste planning policies for Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham Councils were currently contained within the Barnsley, Doncaster, and Rotherham (BDR) Joint Waste Plan 2012 to 2026. The BDR Waste Plan was time limited to 2026, and Sheffield was reliant on “saved” waste polices from its Core Strategy. As such, all the South Yorkshire authorities were in a position where they needed to progress a Waste Local Plan. Officers had worked with the other South Yorkshire authorities to complete a joint Waste Needs Assessment (April 2022) to provide evidence to underpin the preparation of a South Yorkshire Joint Waste Plan. A steering group for the work was established and a Memorandum of Understanding on joint working has been agreed via a delegated decision in December 2023. Milestones for the Joint Waste Plan were summarised in paragraph 2.4 of the report.

The costs for the Joint Waste Plan and required evidence base were estimated to be in the region of £400,000 in total. These costs would be incurred for work that could not be completed in house and other statutory costs such as Sustainability Appraisal, Flood Risk Assessment, Habitats Regulations Assessment, Heritage Impact Assessment, Equalities Impact Assessment, Transport/Infrastructure Study, site assessment work and plan drafting and Planning Inspectorate fees for independent examination.  Accurate costs for each element were not known at present as they were dependent on the scope of work required. This would not be determined until preliminary work on the plan was completed, and the number of candidate sites was known. Those costs would be shared among the four authorities based on the population size of each authority. Rotherham’s population was around 19% of the South Yorkshire total, resulting in a contribution of around £77,000. This contribution was expected to be required over the financial years from 2024/25 to 2026/27.

Recommended to Council:

1.    That Cabinet recommends to Council that the revised Local Development Scheme be adopted at the next available meeting.