Council chiefs will start work on their next local plan later this year – potentially before the current one has even been adopted.

Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council submitted its local plan to the government in December, and its public examination will take place later this year.

The plan will guide all development in the borough up to 2040, and includes site allocations for around 4,500 homes. But new rules means the authority will soon be required to start work on its next local plan, as the current one will meet less than 80 per cent of the area's housing need, as calculated by the government.

The borough council has now published a timetable for the creation of the new plan, as part of its updated local development scheme – all councils have been told to produce an updated LDS by March 6.

Council leader Simon Tagg suggested that the authority would be working to keep its local plan up to date (LDRS).

According to the timetable – which will be subject to revision – work on the new plan will start in November of this year. Consultations will take place in 2026 and 2027, and then the plan will be submitted to the government in March 2028.

Council leaders hope their current local plan will be found sound by the Planning Inspectorate, allowing it to be adopted later this year. The LDS timetable gives November 19 as the date expected date of adopted, as that will be when the last council meeting of the year will be held.

Cabinet members approved the updated LDS at their meeting on Tuesday.

Councillor Andrew Fear, cabinet member for strategic planning, said: "This is being done in response to requests from central government, who seemingly can't resist moving the goalposts with planning from one day to the next. Nonetheless it's a legal requirement.

"What the local development scheme is doing is setting out what documents we have that govern out planning policies. We've now got a new emerging local plan which is going through the inspection process which will replace two of those.

Cllr Andrew Fear said the local plan is being done following requests from central government (Image supplied).

"We've also set out the timetable for this process. This is something we have to do, and it's being done efficiently."

Council leader Simon Tagg suggested that the authority would be working to keep its local plan up to date regardless of government instructions. He said: "Even without the pressure from government to build those extra 2,000 houses in Newcastle, which is something that's been foisted upon us, this process of keeping our plan up to date would have continued anyway. This has just given it some extra urgency from the government's point of view, but not necessarily from ours."

-----------

READ MORE: Year of the Snake slithers into Newcastle care village with scaly guests

Free from clickbait, pop-up ads and unwanted surveys, Stoke Nub News is a quality online newspaper for our city.

Subscribe to our FREE weekly newsletter email HERE - just click the 'SIGN UP' button.

Please consider following Stoke Nub News on Facebook or Twitter.