Unitary Development Plan - First Review 1998-2011

Written Statement First Deposit January 2002

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.0 The Solihull Unitary Development Plan

1.0.1 The Council has a statutory duty to prepare, monitor and review a development plan. The purpose of a development plan is to assess future land use needs (for example, for housing, business, shopping and recreation) and make provision for them by the designation of land; and, secondly, to contain policies with which planning applications for development will have to accord, unless the importance of other material considerations prevails.

1.0.2 This is the first review of the Solihull Unitary Development Plan (UDP) for the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. The UDP was first deposited in 1990 and the subject of 2 Public Local Inquiries in 1991 and 1995. The Plan was adopted in 1997. This first review is a full replacement for the Solihull UDP and rolls the end date forward from 2001 to 2011. The Plan period runs from 1998-2011. Both have been prepared under Part II of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended).

1.0.3 The Plan is in 2 parts: -

• Part I consists of general land use policies that take into account current national policies - mainly expressed in a suite of Planning Policy Guidance documents (PPGs) , the Secretary of State's Regional Planning Guidance for the West Midlands (RPG) (published in 1998) and other regional and national policy that impacts on land use.
• Part II comprises detailed proposals for the use of land and the reasoned justification for both policies and proposals.

1.0.4 Sustainability is a fundamental principle that runs through the policies and proposals set out in this Plan. The aim is to work towards a sustainable future where the needs of today are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This means thinking carefully about the activities that we undertake in our daily lives and the way that we use the planet's scarce resources, such as land. Therefore, the Council has undertaken a Sustainability Appraisal of the policies and proposals in the Plan and this is presented in a separate technical document.

1.0.5 The Plan has been prepared for all those who live, work, invest in and visit the Borough of Solihull - in other words the whole Solihull community. It recognises and builds into its policies the needs of the community for housing, employment, shopping, entertainment, recreation, green space, leisure and other social and community facilities. It also recognises the high quality of the built environment within Solihull and the need to protect, and where necessary improve, this valuable asset.

1.0.6 The Council has tried to make the Plan as concise and `people friendly' as possible through the use of plain language. However, the nature of the Plan means that it can have significant financial, environmental and social consequences for many people. As a result the Plan will be interpreted by lawyers, scrutinised by planners and picked over by surveyors. For this reason the Plan is more lengthy to explain fully what is intended; the Plan is written in a formal way, for legal clarity; and the Plan contains some planning jargon to mirror the language of the Government circulars and guidance to which the Plan relates. Accordingly, a summary written in plain language has also been produced to enable the broad content of the Plan to reach a wider audience.