Sheffield green belt: Next steps in huge Sheffield housing battle as first stage ends
Government inspectors are set to spend six weeks reviewing thousands of objections to Sheffield’s green belt housing plans.
Officials will assess comments made by campaign groups and individuals after 14 sites for more than 3,500 homes were announced in April. The deadline for submissions was on Friday.
They will use them to set agendas for public hearings in autumn, a Sheffield City Council spokesperson said.
Once the hearings are over, inspectors will issue a preliminary report which may contain changes to make the Local Plan ‘sound’.
Those changes will be subject to more public consultation - likely to be early next year.
They will then produce a final report which will come back to Sheffield City Council for a decision, expected in summer next year, the spokesperson added.
Each development would then need to go through the normal planning process - when people can object again.
The Local Plan is a blueprint for development in Sheffield over the next 14 years. It includes targets set by government for 38,000 new homes, 654 acres of employment land.
The authority says it has put forward plans for 25,572 homes on brownfield sites and estimates a further 7,675 dwellings will be built on plots expected to become available in coming years, the majority of which will be brownfield.
It means “all options to build within non-green belt areas have been fully explored, or maximised.”
The shortfall led to proposals to build 3,529 homes on 14 green belt sites.
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