Message from Spelthorne

Dear Sir/Madam,

As you have responded to Local Plan consultations previously or are on our Local Plan database, we are writing to you to tell you the Pre-submission version of the Spelthorne Local Plan was submitted to the Secretary of State for examination on Friday 25 November.

This is a crucial milestone and follows agreement last week by the Chair and Vice Chair of Environment & Sustainability Committee to minor changes and corrections to the Plan. We have received confirmation from the Planning Inspectorate that the Plan has been submitted and they will now proceed to appoint us an inspector.

We have a new dedicated website for the examination: https://spelthornelocalplan.info , where you can view the Local Plan and the supporting evidence and documents required for submission. It will be updated as we progress through the examination process and will soon include officer responses to representations people made during consultation, any letters we receive from our planning inspector, information about what stages we reach and the dates and documents for each hearing session, including links to the Planning Inspectorate videos explaining the examination process.

The hearings will be open to the public and live-streamed online. An inspector will be appointed within the next three weeks and then we will provide further details on when the hearings will take place, likely in spring 2023. We will notify the inspector of those residents and organisations who indicated their request to appear when they responded to the consultation.

The website also includes all the responses made during the Regulation 19 consultation, in A-Z order by respondent and also in policy/site order. These are very lengthy documents at around 2000 pages each so if you wish to find a particular individual, organisation or landowner, please use ‘ctrl F’ to bring up the search box where you can type the name of who you are trying to find.

Consultation responses and your personal data will be passed to the Planning Inspectorate and a Programme Officer. The Programme Officer works for the Planning Inspector who will examine the plan. The Programme Officer may contact you using the personal information you have provided.

Ann Biggs
Strategic Planning Manager