We promised you an update in the Autumn on where Sevenoaks District Council was getting to with the Local Plan. It was due to be at an advanced stage this year, but for the reasons set out below has been pushed back a year to 2026.As foreshadowed, with a change of Government, a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is being developed, upon which the Government have received 1,000s of responses to the mandatory consultation, including from Sevenoaks Town Council and Sevenoaks District Council. As a result, the final form of the new NPPF is not expected until the Spring of 2026.The consequence is that, in turn, the timetable for the Local Plan will be put back by a year, while the Framework is finalised. For those interested in detail the web address for the papers put before last week’s SDC’s Development and Conservation Advisory Committee is :One thing is already clear : Under the revised methodology on Local Housing need, the annual target for Sevenoaks District increases from circa 704 dwellings per annum to circa 1113, with consequence that none of the Options proposed under the draft local plan will meet them. The result is the Plan will need revising radically and require SDC to release some Green Belt- although Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty are understood to still be afforded the highest protection against development.In respect of Green Belt, a new sequential approach is proposed in relation to the release of Green Belt (GB) land:
- First - Previously Development Land (PDL) or ‘brownfield’ in the GB ;
- Second - Grey Belt (limited contribution, but not National Landscape / AONB)
- Third - Higher performing Green Belt sites where they can be made sustainable (for example land around train stations). Where major sites (10+ units) are developed on Grey Belt land, the consultation outlines that they must meet the following ‘golden rules’:
- 50% affordable housing (with focus on social rent)
- Improvements to local infrastructure (e.g. schools, GPs)
- Access to good quality green space
Exceptional circumstances that permit building on Green Belt are now defined to ‘include, but are not limited to, instances where an authority cannot meet its identified need for housing, commercial or other development through other means’. This is a significant shift from the existing version of the NPPF.If planning authorities cannot meet their needs e.g. for housing without using Green Belt land, the new NPPF requires Green Belt boundary review and to propose alterations to meet local housing need in full unless “the review provides clear evidence that such alterations would fundamentally undermine the function of the Green Belt across the area of the plan as a whole”. SDC has already undertaken a Stage 1 and Stage 2 review to assess Green Belt performance across the District.It is totally unclear what this means other than every site put forward for consideration may well now have to be re-assessed and developers can be expected at the consultation stage of the revised draft plan to put forward schemes that have previously been unsuccessful.We will update when we have more news, which is likely to be Spring or early summer of 2026.
