Project Summary

• Production and maintenance of policy matrices covering circa 50 LPAs
• Focus on renewables and, in particular, onshore wind farm development
• Submission of policy representations on draft Local Plan policies and various SPDs

Development Description

CSJ Planning Consultants were employed by RES, an international renewables developer, to undertake planning policy monitoring research for various Local Planning Authorities in Wales and South West England.  This entailed the preparation and periodic updating of comprehensive policy matrices to establish how supportive each LPA policy was and if there were any opportunities to comment on emerging policy documents. Where relevant, CSJ also prepared and submitted robust representations on draft policies and various Supplementary Planning Documents.

Planning Process

This project required an in-depth understanding of the Local Plan and SPD preparation and adoption process in both England and Wales.  The bulk of the workload was monitoring emerging policy and consultation opportunities to ensure the client was always able to identify any opportunities for future development.  Where emerging policies / documents were identified as being unduly prohibitive to renewables development, CSJ worked with technical experts in RES to produce objections with robust supporting evidence.  On numerous occasions we successfully altered the wording of emerging policies to remove onerous phrasing that could have created problems for renewables schemes.