Preferred Options Consultation
The South Warwickshire Local Plan Preferred Options Consultation is now live and will run for a period of 8 weeks, until 11:59pm on Friday 7th March. Residents, businesses and other stakeholders are now invited to have their say on the Preferred Options version of the South Warwickshire Local Plan (2050) for the combined areas of Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon District Councils for the next 25 years.
The consultation document and accompanying materials are all available to view on the South Warwickshire Local Plan Website.
This Preferred Options Document follows on from the previous two rounds of consultations. A Scoping and Call for sites consultation in 2021, and an Issues and Options consultation in early 2023. This Preferred Options document addresses a number of topics such as housing, economy, climate change environment etc and then presents the preferred approach to addressing them. In this consultation document there are a range of draft policies and draft policy directions. Draft policies contain details of the subject matter and clearly set out the requirements of what the policy would like to achieve. The draft policy directions are just an indication of the direction of travel the final policy will take and set out the broad aspirations of the future policy.
The Preferred Options document identifies 24 potential Strategic Growth Locations and 12 potential New Settlement locations, which are an indication of where we consider large-scale strategic growth may be best be located. In addition, smaller scale growth is likely to be appropriate in other locations; these locations are not indicated in the Preferred Options document. Overall, the growth locations identified would accommodate significantly more than South Warwickshire’s identified housing and employment needs, and so it is not expected that all these locations will be allocated as a part of the plan making process. The SWLP team will be undertaking further analysis of the Growth Locations and potential New Settlements to conclude which locations, and specific sites will be most suitable locations for the South Warwickshire’s growth strategy.
How to comment
Wherever possible we encourage the use the online consultation portal, which is the most efficient way for your comments to be processed. A guidance note on how to use the online consultation portal has been created and is available here. Alternative ways to respond are outlined on the preferred options webpage.
Call for Sites
A further targeted Call for Sites is also being run alongside the Preferred Options consultation. This Call for Sites exercise is only for sites that meet at least one of the purposes below:
• A site that falls within or adjacent to one of the 12 proposed New Settlement Locations
• A Gypsy and Traveller / Travelling Showpeople Site
• A site for commercial or community-led renewable energy generation
We will not be accepting any other sites at this time. Submissions can be made using the interactive form which is available on the SWLP website. Submissions to the call for sites will be accepted between Friday 10th January and 11:59pm Friday 7th March 2025.
