I’m encouraged to hear that Stroud District Council’s (SDC’s) Local Plan received approval last Thursday – complete with a minimum 2% strategic land allocation for self and custom build – based on advice from our Technical Representative Sally Tagg and others – an approach which the inspectors were very supportive of.
SDC’s Planning team took inspiration from a past NaCSBA workshop promoting self build initiatives – and this provided the impetus for members of the local authority to take interest in the self build movement. From that point on, the council drafted a self build policy as part of the strategic allocations to bring forward the Local Plan. By attending our workshop, SDC became aware of the sort of challenges facing any provision of self build plots and it sought to address these challenges by engaging with community to address their interest in self build and delivery issues. The council’s self build policy had a whole range of objections from developers and agents but SDC stuck to its guns.
All this evidence was presented and discussed at the examination of the Local Plan; the inspector analysed the findings and supported the policy wholeheartedly saying it was sound and well-founded.
SDC felt that self build could make a significant contribution to creating a sense of place at the strategic allocations. It highlighted that innovative designs can often give a feel and a character to a locality.
