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Have your say on Cardiff’s future

28/05/21
 
Cardiff residents are being asked to join a major consultation which will help shape the future of their city over the next fifteen years.

Launching on Friday, May 28, residents are being asked to give their views on how Cardiff should grow and develop in order to meet demand across the following four key areas:

  • Meeting future needs for homes, jobs and infrastructure;
  • Creating a healthy and sustainable city which responds to the climate emergency, promotes walking and cycling, and improves residents' wellbeing;
  • Supporting the city centre and Cardiff Bay to kick start the post-COVID recovery;
  • Protecting and improving parks, open spaces, river courses, biodiversity and Cardiff's historical & cultural assets.

Information on the consultation - titled ‘Shaping the future of Cardiff' - is available here https://www.cardiffldp.co.uk. Residents who follow the link will be able to visit virtual exhibitions and take an online survey giving their views on the proposals for the new Replacement Local Development Plan for Cardiff.

Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning and Transport, Cllr Caro Wild said: "Cardiff is a vibrant, exciting and growing city which has witnessed some incredible changes over the past 25 years on its way to becoming a thriving European capital. Now, facing the twin challenges of the Climate Emergency and the post-pandemic recovery, we are at a crucial point in our city's development. The decisions we take now will shape the city we become.

"We want our residents to help us design the Cardiff of the future, a sustainable city which will play its part in tackling the Climate Emergency, a city that will continue to fuel the Welsh economy in a post-COVID world, and a city where people can live healthy, happy fulfilling lives in a clean and affordable environment.

"So today we are starting an exciting opportunity to refresh how we plan for the future of our city and consider what sort of policies we can put in place to shape existing areas and manage future growth in a sustainable way. If you don't like a policy - this is where it can be changed. This replacement LDP will shape the look and feel of the city up until 2036, so it is vitally important that Cardiff residents get involved.

"We are committed to an extensive open and honest conversation with everyone that engages in this process about the future of our city, in particular the choices that must be balanced in terms of the social, economic, environmental and cultural issues which will undoubtedly shape the plan."

In line with legislation, after adoption, the council has a statutory duty to review its Local Development Plan every four years to either update it, or progress with a Replacement LDP.

A decision was taken by Cardiff Council's Cabinet and Full Council to move forward with a Replacement LDP on March 18th, 2021 - with approval given for a public consultation to start in May. The Welsh Government has now approved the ‘Delivery Agreement' for the new plan - which sets out the timeline and the stages of the consultation process.

The first stages of the consultation being launched today focuses on:

  • The draft vision, issues and objectives of the new plan (8-week consultation between May 2021 until July 2021)
  • The draft Integrated Sustainability Appraisal (8-week consultation between May 2021 and July 2021) which identifies the equality, environmental and sustainability impacts of the draft plan, as well as impacts on the Welsh Language.
  • Call for Candidate Sites (8-week consultation between May 2021 and August 2021) which is mainly specific to landowners or developers, asking if they wish to put any land they own forward for consideration for development in the new plan.

A Local Development Plan (LDP) acts as a blueprint for the future of the city and allows the council to have control over the different types of development that are built in different areas of the city. The plan responds to the current issues and needs the city faces, by setting out a strategy, proposals and policies on how the city will change in the future.

The online survey - https://wh1.snapsurveys.com/s.asp?k=162011407075- focusses on the vision, issues and objectives of the new plan, with residents being asked to give their views and priorities on the 11 draft objectives put forward in the plan.

Cllr Wild continued: "The preparation of the new LDP will involve making choices, so we can prioritise what is important for our residents; but it is important for everyone to understand that this process will always involve a degree of compromise.

"The city's current LDP had to respond an extremely limited local housing supply which meant it needed to bring forward a high number of new homes to meet the city's needs. Without this housebuilding, and associated affordable and social housing, our housing crisis would be far worse, with even more people unable to afford to buy or rent a home.

"As these homes are now being built, we expect our new LDP to have a different starting point, with a stronger housing supply in place at the outset. But it will have to respond to new challenges that we face, such as tackling the climate emergency, poor air quality, maximising the wellbeing of future generations and responding to the issues raised by the ongoing pandemic."

There are then three further stages of the consultation process for the new plan, which are:

  • A 10 week consultation between November 2021 and February 2022, on the ‘Strategic Options', which looks for feedback on how the plan can address the key issues that have been identified.
  • Using these findings, this detail will then be used to prepare the ‘Preferred Strategy,' which in effect is the draft plan. This will set out our response to the key issues and will include planning policies and an indication on where new developments will be located in the city.
  • An 8-week consultation will then take place between October 2022 and November 2022 on the ‘Preferred Strategy', so that all the responses can be considered before finalising the document into the final version of the plan - known as the ‘Deposit Plan'. During this part of the consultation, residents will also be able to comment on the ‘Integrated Sustainability Appraisal' (ISA), giving residents the opportunity to comment on the assessment on how the new plan addresses environmental, equality, and sustainability issues.
  • All of these comments are then considered and the ‘Deposit Plan' and the final ISA report are then produced, and a final consultation stage takes place between October 2023 and November 2023 on these documents.
  • All of the comments from the public on the ‘Deposit Plan' are considered by an independent Inspector as part of the examination process which decides if the plan can be formally approved.

Once the public consultation stages are complete and the documents are final, a process then follows before the LDP can be adopted. The timeline is as follows:

  • The Deposit Plan and Final ISA will be submitted to Welsh Government in March 2024
  • The evaluation by the Planning Inspector will take place between March 2024 and September 2024
  • The Inspections report is expected to be received back from Welsh Government in September 2024
  • Report to Full Council to adopt the revised LDP in October 2024.