Wiltshire Council has voted to approve sending the local plan to the Secretary of State before the end of the year.

After holding a consultation which attracted over 10,700 comments, the council is ready to send the local plan off to be examined by a planning inspector.

Cllr Nick Botterill, cabinet member for planning, told councillors that approving the plan now would allow Wiltshire Council to benefit from the transition period before the government requires a “colossal increase” in house building.

The local plan sets out how the council will deliver more than 36,000 homes, 160ha of employment land, and approximately 21,300 jobs by 2038.

READ MORE: Wiltshire Council's cabinet questioned on local plan

The chamber was packed for the full council meeting.The chamber was packed for the full council meeting. (Image: Wiltshire Council) It was approved for send-off at the full council meeting in Trowbridge County Hall on Tuesday, October 15.

Cllr Botterill said: “The local plan is a complex composite of policies and items encompassing a myriad of competing claims.

“As is sometimes the case in life, in general, with the local plan, there is not a slam dunk simple answer to each and every proposal of yes or no.”

SEE ALSO: Hilperton group raise fears over Wiltshire's Local Plan

A member of Wiltshire Climate Alliance, Adrian Temple-Brown, attended the meeting and claimed that it was the “wrong plan for 2024” and with “nothing” to “urgently bring methane emissions down to zero”.

Cllr Botterill argued that if the plan wasn’t approved, it would “be done for us”.

The leader of Wiltshire Council, Richard Clewer, described it as an “evidence-based approach about the best or least bad places” for the necessary housing to be built.

Independent Cllr Ernie Clark acknowledged that it was “contentious” but noted that “every plan is”.

He added: “I think for the sake of Wilshire as a county and us as a council we have no option other than to put this forward.”

However, independent Cllr Matthew Dean suggested Wiltshire Council should wait until the government’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) are published.

He claimed: “It is the height of folly to put all this in the hands of a planning inspector that will read this document against the NPPF which is being published before the end of the year.”

Conservative Cllr Phillip Whitehead disagreed, stating that would be “the worst thing” the council could do.

Cllr Botterill added: “Providing we submit this plan to inspection within one month of the publication of the government’s responses to the NPPF, it has been accepted by government that the plan will continue to be considered on the basis of the policies that pre-dated that NPPF change.”

Labour’s official proposed reforms to the NPPF state that plans that have reached Regulation 19 publication stage, which Wiltshire’s local plan has, but that have not yet been submitted for examination one month after the revised framework is published should progress to examination under the version of the NPPF it has used when preparing the plan thus far.

This is providing there is a gap of no more than 200 dwellings per year between the local planning authority’s revised local housing need figure and its proposed housing requirement.

Conservative Cllr Sven Hocking raised concerns about the controversial sites to the south of Salisbury, noting that his residents generated approximately one third of the total comments on the local plan consultation.

Following what he called “strident” language towards the Labour government’s plan for homes, Liberal Democrat Cllr David Vigar said: “Let’s respect the fact that a lot of young people need their homes, and we should be looking to find places to build them rather than simply to resist.”  

In the end, the council voted almost unanimously, with one objection and one abstention, in favour of sending off the local plan.