Local Plan Regulation 18 Newly Submitted Sites and New Policies Consultation

Have your say on newly submitted sites and new policies.

The consultation period starts on Wednesday 16 July 2025 and ends at 11:59 pm on Sunday 31 August 2025.

To participate please scroll to the bottom of this page and click on one of the two surveys. The first survey is on the newly submitted sites and the other is on the new policies. We’d like as much engagement as possible but you can choose which questions you wish to respond to. You do not have to answer every question, if you wish to move on to questions about another area in the district or on another policy please scroll to the bottom of the page to continue through the survey.

A PDF version of the consultation document is available together with the other supporting documents in the Documents tab to the right hand side of this page. It is recommended to view all of these documents before undertaking the surveys.

Please note that Three Rivers will only consider comments by respondents who provide their full name and address. Your name, organisation and response will be made publicly available once we publish responses; any comments made in your response therefore cannot be treated as confidential (published comments will exclude your personal contact details).

Inappropriate, offensive or racist comments will not be accepted.

We cannot consider matters that are outside the boundaries of the planning process and are likely to be civil matters between parties. These include representations in relation to loss of property value, loss of view from property, private access rights, moral issues and restrictive covenants.

Decisions on sites and policies will not solely be based upon how many responses of support or objection are received but will primarily be based on the impact of the development assessed against local and national policy and the requirements that a Local Plan must meet.

An updated sustainability appraisal working note has been prepared. This document appraises the environmental, social and economic implications of the sites and policies and can be viewed on the Documents tab to the right hand side of this page.

The Local Plan Regulation 18 Consultation Documents, accompanying Sustainability Appraisal Working Notes and the evidence base studies which have been completed so far can be viewed on the council’s website at: https://www.threerivers.gov.uk/services/planning/planning-policy/new-local-plan

Notification of Future Consultations

If you would like your email address to be added to the Local Plan consultation database so that you are notified of future Local Plan consultations, please request this by emailing localplanconsult@threerivers.gov.uk including your full name and email address.

Foreword by Councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst OBE, Leader of the Council and Lead Member on the Local Plan and Infrastructure, Three Rivers District Council

Dear Fellow Residents,

Following the change in government and updates to national planning policy, the Council agreed to delay submitting its new Local Plan to undertake a further green belt review and other key evidence that could potentially enable it to submit a plan for a lower housing number than the government says it wants for the area. The government has set a mandatory target of 13,312 homes for Three Rivers over the next 16 years. This is an increase on previous government figures.

We are committed to protecting as much of our green belt as possible. The government’s new policies now require us to provide clear evidence that release of green belt would fundamentally undermine its function across the district. Effectively, this means preventing merging of communities in our area, a key function of the green belt. We have already undertaken extensive work on green belt sites, promoted by developers, and excluded harmful Green Belt sites from our last plan, which received large support from residents and community and environmental groups.

This additional evidence work, whilst delaying submission of the plan, gives us the best chance to avoid having to submit a plan for 13,312 new homes. Unfortunately, it had become clear that pursuing the previous low growth approach of fewer than 5,000 new homes was not an option as it would be rejected by the government inspector at examination. Naturally, had we thought that there was a chance of success for the low growth plan this is the approach we would have taken.

We are consulting on newly submitted sites, and a few amended sites, as well as some policies that have not been previously consulted on. We are still assessing the sites and undertaking evidence work to inform those site assessments. We are looking for your views to help inform decisions on which sites should be included in the local plan going forwards.

At this stage, we are not saying that any of these sites will necessarily be in the local plan, merely that they are under consideration. We have set out which sites we consider potentially suitable and where we have some concerns or significant concerns.

Following this consultation, we will consider your comments and the evidence being prepared before deciding which sites we propose to include in the draft Local Plan. We will also make final amendments to the policies before consulting on the whole draft Local Plan that we propose to submit for examination by an independent government inspector.

We remain committed to a Local Plan that ensures we have the right amount of housing while protecting as much of our green belt as possible.

We are giving our communities another chance to comment and express their views on the sites and policies we are considering for the Local Plan before we go out for final consultation on the whole plan. Your voice matters, so please have your say.

So please let us have your views.

Kind regards

Councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst OBE