Local Plan 2040 approved in Hyndburn
The final 2040 Local Plan was given near unanimous approval at a full meeting of Hyndburn Council on Thursday night,
Councillors in Hyndburn have finalised an important document that designates certain parts of the borough for development over the next 14 years – despite the fact it won’t exist.
The final 2040 Local Plan was given near unanimous approval at a full meeting of Hyndburn Council on Thursday night, with only Reform UK’s Cllr Anthony Mitchell voting against it. Though, many others had reservations about certain aspects of the blueprint.
With 3686 homes targeted to be built across the borough over that period, some councillors raised issues with certain allocations of land in their own patches, but ultimately agreed with the plan. In part because the alternative could be much worse.
This is because finding and allocating land for housing or business is one of the biggest responsibilities that local authorities have, as these plans are used to guide developers when they are looking for suitable plots to build on and shape the future appearance of Hyndburn.
Notably, failure to allocate this land and meet government-set targets for housebuilding would essentially result in the council losing its ability to refuse development in parts of the borough where the authority does not want to build.
This is already happening in neighbouring Ribble Valley Council, which was recently unable to demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land and so had the national Planning Inspectorate overrule their decision to turn down 300 homes in a rural village.
That now means that any housebuilder looking to build in Ribble Valley will have a ‘tilted balance’ in favour of their application, at least until the council can allocate enough land for development.
At Thursday night’s extended full council meeting, this ruling was referred to multiple times as a reason to sign off on the plan, which has been in the works since 2017 and could radically transform every part of the borough from Oswaldtwistle to Rishton.
Accrington has been earmarked for major high-density development on some of the town centre’s brownfield and long vacant sites, which make up almost a third of the Local Plan’s residential allocations.
The biggest increase in Hyndburn’s housing stock though will be the already signed off Huncoat Garden Village, which will create around 1500 homes on the site of the old power station.
Other land set aside for new housing developments includes around 300 homes in the Oswaldtwistle area that will be built in separate parcels, with brownfield land off Brookside Lane and greenfield land south of Stanhill Road making up the majority of this allocation.
Land for 288 homes around Rishton was also included in the plans, with 188 of these units envisioned on a stretch of greenfield next to Cutwood Park, with other brownfield or already approved developments making up the rest of its portion of the Local Plan.
In addition to housing, the plan also designates 70 hectares of land for business development, mainly at Altham, where the council has released Green Belt land to support future employment, and Whitebirk, where a large expanse around the railway line has been earmarked for future storage and logistics facilities.
Hyndburn Council’s leader, Cllr Munsif Dad, welcomed the finalised framework for the area at last Thursday’s three-hour meeting, saying: “The adoption of the plan will provide significant benefits for the borough.
“It ensures the council has an up to date development plan that identifies significant land to meet housing and employment needs, directs growth to the most sustainable locations, and provides greater certainty for communities and developers – and places the council in a much stronger position to resist peculation and unplanned development.”
But following last week’s announcement revealing that all of East Lancashire’s local councils will be rolled into one unitary authority, you could be forgiven for thinking all of this forward planning is a major waste of time.
However, these local plans, devised by all councils, will help to inform the spatial frameworks that the new mega-authority will rely on when making decisions on future planning applications.
Jane Ellis, Hyndburn’s Executive Director of legal and democratic services, explained at the meeting that the new authority will eventually work on its own plan, with an early draft unlikely before 2030.
So even though Hyndburn Council will cease to exist in April 2028, these laborious blueprints for local development will long outlive it and continue to shape how the borough will change for years to come.