From the Wiltshire Live Facebook page:

Only the nerdiest of local government nerds truly gets excited by the words Local Plan.

They’re very long, complicated documents full of obscure planning terms like “strategic allocation” and “spatial strategy” and “hierarchy of centres” and they can be extremely dry.

So, why does it matter whether Swindon Borough Council has a Local Plan or not?

The first, easy answer is that it’s legally required by government.

The second, more complicated, but more important answer is that not having one leaves a council open to development it, and more crucially, its residents and taxpayers don’t want.

The key words are “housing land supply”.

Targets from central government mean that Swindon must deliver 1,205 homes each year over the course of the next two decades.

And it must have land allocated for five years of that supply – at any one moment, it should know where 6,025 houses could be built over the next five years.

That, again, is a legal requirement, and there are real-world consequences if the council doesn’t have that supply.

And right now, it doesn’t.

Even before the Labour government elected a year ago increased the target for Swindon, it did not quite have enough land allocated – the last allocation statement made in late 2023 said Euclid Street had a supply of 4.8 years, which is close, but not quite.

Many, many councils do not have their five-year supply sorted and it has given rise to a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has attended planning committee meetings with any regularity.

A housing developer will present proposals for a substantial number of houses somewhere, which is unpopular with people already living nearby.

The planning committee don’t like it very much either, and they don’t want to give it permission.

But they, and their planning and legal advisors, know, a refusal will most likely see the developer take the matter to appeal, to be adjudicated by a government-appointed inspector.

And that if the council doesn’t have a five-year housing land supply sorted, the inspector is much more likely to rule in favour of the developer, and the council has spent thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds for no reason.

So, despite obvious reluctance, the developer’s plans are approved, pleasing neither residents nor the members of the planning committee.

Avoiding this is just one reason why a Local Plan, approved and in action is a good thing to have.