To present the Tendring District Local Plan – Preferred Options Draft to the Planning Policy and Local Plan Committee and to seek its agreement for this document, along with the associated evidence base (including the Sustainability Appraisal, Habitat Regulations Assessment and other relevant technical studies) to be recommended for approval by Full Council to proceed to formal public consultation in line with Regulation 18 of the statutory plan-making process.

 

The Preferred Options Draft for the first time contains the full suite of planning policies and detailed policies maps recommended by Officers; incorporating and reflecting the spatial strategy, locations and sites for growth that were agreed by the Committee at its meeting on 8 December 2025 and the overarching guiding principles established at the beginning of the Local Plan review process.

Earlier on in the meeting, as detailed under Minute 23 above, Councillor Scott had declared an Interest in respect of new non-strategic policy PPL12b (St. Osyth Priory) insofar as he was a Trustee of the St. Osyth Priory Education Trust. However, he had stated that this would not affect his ability to impartially consider the contents of report A.1.

 

The Committee considered a comprehensive report of the Corporate Director (Planning and Community) (A.1) which presented the Tendring District Local Plan – Preferred Options Draft and which sought the Committee’s agreement for this document, along with the associated evidence base (including the Sustainability Appraisal, Habitat Regulations Assessment and other relevant technical studies) to be recommended for approval by Full Council to proceed to formal public consultation in line with Regulation 18 of the statutory plan-making process.

 

Members were reminded that the Preferred Options Draft for the first time contained the full suite of planning policies and detailed policies maps recommended by Officers; incorporating and reflecting the spatial strategy, locations and sites for growth that had been agreed by the Committee at its meeting held on 8 December 2025 and the overarching guiding principles established at the beginning of the Local Plan review process.

 

The Committee was cognisant that the Local Plan would help guide the direction of growth and the shape of the Tendring area – not just in the coming years to address immediate pressures, but for future decades and generations to come. The choices made by the Council on the content of the Local Plan in 2026 would be more important than ever before as it would likely be the last one prepared by Tendring District Council before Local Government Reorganisation and the establishment of a new unitary authority in 2028. The timeframes for agreeing and carrying out consultation on the Local Plan and submitting a final version to the Secretary of State under the current plan-making system were extremely tight and the strict rules laid down by central Government in respect of mandatory housebuilding targets made the task even more challenging. However, choices over the location of growth and the content of policy were important decisions to be taken locally, by the elected Members of the Council, having considered the advice of their Officers and feedback from communities and other stakeholders.  

 

Members were aware that, in its role as a Local Planning Authority, the Council had a statutory duty to produce a Local Plan and to keep it up to date. The Local Plan was one of the most important documents the Council produced, setting out both the blueprint for future growth and the policies against which planning applications were determined. It was important for Councils to keep their Local Plans up to date to ensure they could manage the pattern of growth and quality of development to achieve sustainable development that weighed up economic, social and environmental factors and maximised the benefit to the existing local community and future generations.

 

Background

 

The Committee recognised that, over the last two years, the Council had been in the process of updating and reviewing the Tendring District Local Plan under its statutory duties and had done so clearly and transparently through its reports and meetings – following a logical sequence and an agreed set of overarching guiding principles. The various stages of this process had been extensively documented in reports to, and associated decisions from, the Planning Policy and Local Plan Committee since December 2023.

 

Members recognised that, with Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation on the horizon, this Local Plan review was likely to be the last one carried out by Tendring District Council (TDC) in its current configuration – and so this could be TDC’s last opportunity to influence the long-term approach to growth in the District before future strategic planning powers passed to the future combined mayoral authority for Greater Essex and Local Plan making powers passed to a future unitary authority.

 

The Committee was aware that failing to keep the Local Plan up to date risked losing control of the pattern of growth and the quality of development and having decisions taken out of this Council’s hands or overturned on appeal. However, in preparing and reviewing Local Plans, Councils were expected to follow national planning policy produced by the Government – which now included a requirement to comply with challenging mandatory housebuilding targets which, for Tendring, meant a significant increase in the requirement for new housing development – with no mechanism anymore to challenge or argue for a lower target.    

 

Preferred Options stage and future programme

 

Members were informed that the ‘Preferred Options’ stage of the statutory plan-making process involved producing and publishing, for public consultation, a first detailed draft of the new Local Plan containing a full suite of planning policies and associated maps. The intention would be that the comments received in response to the consultation would be considered in preparing a final ‘publication’ draft version of the Local Plan for a further final round of public consultation before it was then submitted to the Secretary of State to be examined by a government-appointed Planning Inspector. The Inspector’s duty would be to test the legal compliance and soundness of the Plan, to ensure compliance with national requirements, before it could be formally adopted by the Council.

 

Members recalled that, at its last meeting held on 8 December 2025, the Committee had agreed an updated Local Development Scheme (LDS) which included the revised work programme and timetable for completing the Local Plan review process. In line with the agreed timetable, it was the Council’s intention to carry out consultation on the Preferred Options Draft in early 2026 with the aim of progressing to the final Publication Draft consultation and submission of the Plan to the Secretary of State by the end of 2026, before the national plan-making rules changed to a new system. It was then expected that the Planning Inspector’s examination could take place in 2027 so that the Council would be able adopt the new Local Plan by the end of 2027, before Local Government Reorganisation took place in 2028.    

 

Vision, objectives and spatial strategy

 

The Committee was reminded that Local Plans should plan for growth over a timeframe of at least 15 years from the anticipated point of adoption and therefore the Preferred Options Draft contained a strategy for future growth up to 2042, with development in some locations intended to continue beyond 2042 and into the longer-term to meet the needs of future generations. At its December 2025 meeting, the Committee had agreed the overarching spatial strategy for growth for delivering at least 18,071 homes between 2025 and 2042 as dictated by the Government’s new mandatory housebuilding targets; alongside necessary services, facilities and infrastructure and opportunities for employment creation.

 

It was reported that the strategy carried forward the major growth already proposed at the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community and around Clacton from the Council’s current Local Plan along with other sites already granted planning permission, under construction or otherwise expected to come forward elsewhere in the District which, in total, were expected to deliver around 10,700 of the 18,071 homes.

 

But to deliver the additional housing now required under the Government’s mandatory target, the strategy for delivering the extra (approximately) 7,400 homes had focussed growth on locations along the A120 corridor (Harwich, Horsley Cross and Hare Green) and villages with railways stations along the Colchester to Walton-on-the-Naze branch line (particularly Weeley and, to a lesser extent Alresford, Great Bentley and Thorpe-le-Soken); with proportionate additional growth around most (but not all) other towns and villages. The decision previously taken by the Committee on housing numbers, spatial strategy, locations and sites for housing, mixed-use development and employment land was reflected in the recommended Preferred Options Draft Local Plan now presented with this report.

 

The Committee recalled that, as part of the Issues and Options consultation carried out in Spring 2025, the Council had consulted the public on a draft vision for the Tendring District and an associated set of objectives – updated from the current adopted Local Plan to reflect both an extended time period and the increase in growth anticipated, mainly as a result of the Government’s mandatory housebuilding targets. The vision and objectives had been updated further for the purposes of the Preferred Options Draft to reflect the agreed spatial strategy for growth and having considered comments received as part of the last consultation.

 

Planning policies 

 

Members were reminded that, at the beginning of the Local Plan review, the Committee at its meeting held on 20 December 2023 had agreed an overarching set of guiding principles which had subsequently been the subject of consultation as part of the Issues and Options stage of the process. One of the agreed principles was for the focus of the Local Plan review to be on updating the current adopted Local Plan as opposed to a more fundamental re-write or starting completely from scratch. It had been agreed that this would involve extending the Plan’s timeframe; making improvements to selected policies where necessary; topping up the supply of housing and employment land to meet longer-term needs; and ensuring that the Plan aligned with the latest National Planning Policy Framework. 

 

It was further reported, that, at that December 2023 meeting, the Committee had also received the Officers’ initial analysis of planning policies from the Council’s existing adopted Local Plan looking at which policies could potentially be carried forward unchanged into a new Local Plan, and which policies might need revising or deleting, along with areas where additional policies might be required going forward. This initial analysis had considered changes in national policy and legislation, practical issues experienced in the application of policies in the determination of planning applications, and whether the evidence in support of certain policies needed to be revisited or updated.

 

Although there had been further, and significant, changes in national planning policy since that 2023 exercise (particularly in respect of housing targets), that initial analysis had remained broadly relevant and accurate – and had provided a strong basis for progressing the review of planning policies and determining what was now recommended for inclusion in the Preferred Options Draft of the Local Plan.

 

Therefore, in line with the overarching principle of revising and updating rather than re-writing the Council’s existing Local Plan and using the analysis of existing policies as a basis for the review, the Preferred Options Draft recommended in this report had followed a similar format and chapter headings to that of the Council’s existing adopted Local Plan and many of the policies had been carried forward either unchanged or only slightly updated and revised. The document did however also contain policies with significant revisions from the previous adopted version along with some entirely new policies – many of which were site-specific relating to the new locations and sites now identified in the Plan for additional future development to meet the Government’s housebuilding targets.

 

Members were informed that, for the purpose of the Preferred Options Draft, completely new policies had been shown with a green background to differentiate them from policies carried forward from the existing adopted Local Plan, which had a light purple background. For policies carried forward from the existing Local Plan with notable revisions, only the sections of those policies containing such revisions or additions had been highlighted green.  

 

The Committee noted that notable new policies included site-specific policies setting out overarching expectations for the mixed-use Garden Village developments proposed at Hare Green, Horsley Cross and Weeley; site-specific policies for the other larger residential and mixed-use developments around the District’s towns and villages; as well as policies relating to other complex schemes or heritage and/or regeneration projects such as St. Osyth Priory, Thorpe Maltings and Walton Mere. There were also new policies on managing the location of hot food takeaways on health grounds, extensions to employment sites, Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), water efficiency (noting the pressure on water resources in the area), energy efficiency and net zero carbon requirements for new development.

 

It was highlighted that one of the most notable revisions to existing policies related to affordable housing (Policy LP5). Officers had proposed a reduction to the on?site affordable housing requirement from 30% to 20% for most residential developments of ten or more homes; except for the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community and the new Garden Village proposals at Hare Green and Horsley Cross, where the requirement would remain at 30%. This adjustment was intended to reflect the added costs associated with delivering zero?carbon homes, higher water?efficiency standards, and a proposed 20% BNG requirement, which taken together impacted upon development viability on all but the largest developments.

 

It was reported that other key revisions included higher expectations around open space provision on larger residential and mixed-use sites (Policy HP5) and a more permissive approach to custom and self?build housing (Policy LP7), which could create new opportunities for people to build their own homes on sites at the edges of smaller villages. In addition, the Gypsy and Traveller policy (Policy LP9) had been refreshed to account for the projected need for 38 additional pitches up to 2042.

 

Policies Maps

 

It was reported that the policies maps that accompanied the Preferred Options Draft would be presented in a similar format to those in the Council’s current adopted Local Plan in the interest of familiarity and continuity. As per the current Local Plan, they would include large scale maps at District level over three foldout maps covering the west, south-east and north-east of the District respectively; and then separately, at a more close-up scale, area by area and settlement by settlement on specific inset maps presented in alphabetical order. The allocations and designations shown across the policies maps and policies map insets included (amongst other things):

 

•    the revised ‘settlement development boundaries’ for defined towns and villages (commonly referred to as the ‘settlement limit’ or ‘village envelope’), aimed at preventing uncontrolled urban sprawl, and within which there was a general presumption, in principle, in favour of development;

 

•    the ‘broad locations’ for the larger Garden Communities and Garden Villages within which further, more detailed master-planning in the future would determine more precise boundaries;

 

•    sites specifically allocated for housing, mixed-use development and new (and existing) employment land;

 

•    town centre boundaries and associated primary shopping areas;

 

•    priority areas for regeneration;

 

•    safeguarded holiday parks;

 

•    protected scheduled ancient monuments, conservation areas, historic parks and gardens, local areas of special character and protected lanes;

 

•    areas protected for their international, national and local importance for wildlife;

 

•    areas at risk of flooding based on Environment Agency data;

 

•    national landscapes (formerly known as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (i.e. at Dedham Vale and Suffolk Coast & Heaths)); and

 

•    Strategic Green Gaps, Coastal Protection Belt and protected/safeguarded open space. 

 

All of the designations and notations on the policies maps related to one or more of the planning policies included within the written part of the Draft Local Plan. Of note was the proposed establishment of additional Strategic Green Gaps at Elmstead Market, Weeley Heath and Little Oakley and the extension of the existing Green Gap south of Kirby-le-Soken.  

 

Legal compliance and soundness

 

The Council was required to produce a Local Plan that was legally compliant and sound and this had to be tested and confirmed by a government-appointed Planning Inspector at the examination stage of the process before the Council could lawfully proceed to formally adopt the Plan.

 

The legal test was for the Local Plan to have been prepared in accordance with all the relevant legislation, regulations and procedures which included the legal ‘Duty to Cooperate’ with other bodies on cross-boundary issues (although this was set to be abolished), carrying out consultation in the correct manner and preparing and consulting on a Sustainability Appraisal and Habitat Regulations Assessment. The soundness test for the Local Plan was set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which stated that Plans could be considered ‘sound’ if they had been positively prepared, justified, were effective and were consistent with national policy.

 

Officers believed that the Preferred Options Draft Local Plan presented with this report represented a legally compliant and sound Plan as far as was required at this stage of the process. However, others could indicate otherwise through representations in response to the public consultation; and those representations could then be considered by the Council in making any necessary revisions to the Plan at publication stage before it was submitted to the Secretary of State for examination by the Planning Inspector.

 

Although an Inspector could, through the later examination process, propose modifications to rectify resolvable soundness issues, it could lengthen the examination and delay formal adoption – and it was therefore advisable that Councils carried out their own assessment as their Plans progressed through the different stages of the process. With that in mind, Officers had continually assessed the soundness of policies in the recommended Preferred Options Draft Local Plan with reference to guidance produced by the Planning Advisory Service (PAS).

 

Weight to be given to the emerging Local Plan

 

The Committee was cognisant that, from 26 January 2026, the Council’s existing Section 1 Local Plan containing the current housebuilding requirement of 550 homes a year would be more than five-years old – thereby requiring the Council to revert to new Government mandatory housebuilding target of 1,063 for the purposes of calculating housing supply and making decisions on planning applications for housing. This would result in the Council initially being unable to demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing land until such time that sufficient sites had obtained planning permission or could otherwise be shown to be deliverable within five years.

 

Until the supply of housing land increased to the extent that a five-year supply could be demonstrated, the District would be vulnerable to a potential increase in planning applications for housing development. National planning policy would expect the application of the ‘tilted balance’ to the Government’s ‘Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development’, which essentially required Councils to grant planning permission for new housing unless there were very good reasons not to do so, regardless of whether sites were allocated in the Local Plan. This created a heightened risk that refusals without sufficiently robust justification would be overturned on appeal by a government-appointed Planning Inspector.

 

However, Councils were allowed to give some weight to the policies and proposals in emerging Local Plans according to their stage of preparation, the extent to which there were unresolved objections to relevant policies and the degree of consistency with the policies in the NPPF. Therefore, if the Council agreed to publish the Preferred Options Draft Local Plan for public consultation, Planning Officers and the Council’s Planning Committee would have the ability to give some weight to the emerging policies in the determination of planning applications, alongside the existing adopted policies – with the weight increasing as the Plan progressed through the remaining stages of the review process.

 

Public consultation and community engagement

 

It was reported that, under the plan-making regulations, the Preferred Options Draft Local Plan must be published alongside the Sustainability Appraisal, Habitat Regulations Assessment and other supporting evidence for six-weeks public consultation. It was proposed that the consultation could take place during February and March 2026 and would include a number of public events, particularly in the areas most affected by the largest of the proposed new developments.   

 

In line with the Council’s Constitution, the decision to formally proceed to public consultation was one for Full Council to make on consideration of a recommendation from the Planning Policy and Local Plan Committee. In preparation for both a Full Council decision and the subsequent public consultation that would take place if the Council agreed to proceed with that consultation, an all-Member briefing had been organised for 21 January 2026. Furthermore, Officers had, and would continue to, engage informally with Ward Councillors and Town and Parish Councils. This kind of informal engagement had in the past proven to be very helpful in informing the content of the Draft Local Plan to date and would continue to be valuable in ensuring community engagement was genuinely effective; and even though it was accepted that not everyone would be able to agree with or support the content of the Local Plan, people would at least be as well informed as possible.

 

At the meeting, the Corporate Director (Planning and Community), assisted by the Planning Policy Team Leader, introduced the report.

 

The Corporate Director (Planning and Community) responded to the points raised by Mr. Morris under Public Speaking (Minute 25 above).

 

Officers then responded to the following questions/concerns/queries et cetera from Committee Members:-

 

·      believed that new Strategic Policy SAH4 (development at land east of Church Road, Brightlingsea) could be omitted without any negative impact on the Local Plan overall due to its additional probable negative impact on traffic movement and peak time congestion; the site’s distance from the school, GP surgery, shops et cetera and the absence of a railway station;

·      pointed out errors in Section 1.3.1 (Retail Development) in Annexes A & B of the ISA Interim Report by ECC Place Services i.e. 18 Victoria Place, Brightlingsea is not vacant;

·      believed that some open green space areas had not been included in the maps;

·      wondered whether text relating to water pressure could be included within new Strategic Policy PPL5 (water conservation, drainage and sewerage);

·      in relation to revised Strategic Policy LP5 (Affordable Housing), had mixed views on the proposal that the current percentage requirement for affordable housing on large sites be reduced from 30% on developments of 11 or more homes, to 20% on developments of 10 or more homes with the exception of the TCB Garden Community and the garden villages proposed for Horsley Cross and Hare Green;

·      important to ensure that there is a Local Plan in place when TDC ceases to exist and the new Unitary Authority succeeds as a positive legacy for the District area and its residents;

·      there must be maximum publicity of the public consultation and a universal effort to urge residents and other interested parties to have their say; and

·      in relation to bio-diversity net gain, had concerns that the net gain increase to 20% could prove a barrier to housing delivery.

 

Having duly taken all the above information into account and having discussed the matter, it was moved by Councillor White, seconded by Councillor M Cossens and unanimously:-

 

RESOLVED that the Planning Policy and Local Plan Committee –

 

a)   notes the content of this report explaining how the Tendring District Local Plan – Preferred Options Draft has been developed having regard to the direction given and decisions taken by the Committee at previous meetings, feedback from the public consultation on Issues and Options carried out in Spring 2025 and the emerging evidence base – as well as the requirements of national planning policy;  

 

b)   having considered the Tendring District Local Plan – Preferred Options Draft (at Appendix 1) agrees to recommend to Full Council, following consultation with the Leader of the Council, that it be approved for six-weeks public consultation, alongside the related Sustainability Appraisal (at Appendix 2), Habitats Regulation Assessment (at Appendix 3) and other supporting evidence (including those listed as background documents) in accordance with Regulation 18 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 (as amended) and Regulation 13 of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programme Regulations;

 

c)   recommends to Full Council that delegated authority be given to the Corporate Director (Planning and Community), in consultation with the Chairman of the Planning Policy and Local Plan Committee to make corrections, if necessary, to address any minor formatting, mapping, typographical, grammatical or factual errors within the aforementioned Draft Plan (in Appendix 1), in the event that any are discovered before consultation commences; and

 

d)   notes that if, or when, the Local Plan – Preferred Options Draft is agreed by Full Council to be published for consultation, its policies and proposals can be taken into account in the determination of planning applications, alongside those of the current adopted Local Plan – with weight afforded to the emerging policies in accordance with the guidance set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).