How to have your say on housing

Your Focus Team has been contacted by residents who have found it difficult to access the latest consultation on the Policies, Sites and Places Plan. This is your opportunity to have your say on how the council should allocate land for an additional 1,500 houses in the next 5 years.

The council would like you to use their online response form. To do this, you first need to register with the council’s consultation system on this page and log in. You can then go directly to the consultation document here. There are questions set out in the text with boxes to type your answers. You can answer some or all of them.

To read through the document from beginning to end in order, use the “Next” link with an arrow at the bottom of each page. You can go straight to a specific section by clicking on the links down the left hand side of the page. If you have comments to make but are not sure which section they apply to, you can put them in response to question 12 in Section 22.

• How to make representations, Question 1 – Fill this in if you are commenting on a particular site or community.
• Section 3, Question 2 – If you agree that the council should deal with its shortfall in housing over a longer period, because developers cannot feasibly build enough houses each year to do it over a shorter period, say so here.
• Section 4, Questions 3 and 4 – These questions are about Yate, Chipping Sodbury and Thornbury.
• Section 7, Question 5 – This is a question about how the council works with other authorities.
• Section 13, Question 6 – This is about the size of sites the council will consider. South Glos is arguing that the developers will not be able to deliver lots of homes on any one site in the next 5 years and so they will only consider sites up to 150 homes. This is your opportunity to say whether you agree or think the sites should be smaller.
• Section 16, Question 7 – The council is suggesting that sites should be considered in the following order: 1) Sites that are in the existing built up areas 2) Sites on the edge of Yate, Chipping Sodbury and Thornbury outside the Green Belt 3) Sites on the edge of sustainable villages within the rural areas outside the Green Belt 4) Sites on the edge of the main urban area in the Green Belt 5) Sites on the edge of Yate, Chipping Sodbury and Thornbury 6) Sites adjoining on the edge of sustainable villages within the rural areas in the Green Belt.
• Section 17, Questions 8 – Fill this in if you think any other village should be assessed to see whether it is a sustainable place to build.
• Section 17, Question 9 – This asks if you agree with the range of facilities and services the council is looking at when assessing whether a community is a sustainable place to build new homes.
• Section 18, Question 10 – The council has gone on to use the assessment in the previous section to rank the towns and villages by their access to different facilities. Question 10 allows you to agree or disagree with this.
• Section 19, Question 11 – This looks at step 2 of the process, where the impact a new development would have on the character of a town or village is considered. If you want to comment on this, respond to Question 11.
• Section 22, Question 12 – Your chance to make any comments you have that don’t fit into the other boxes.

If you have any queries, you can contact the Strategic Planning Policy Team at PlanningLDF@southglos.gov.uk or on 01454863469.