£2.2m local homes plan scrapped after nine years of work

A £2.2m draft local plan for housing development that was nine years in the making has been scrapped.

The Wiltshire Local Plan was designed to offer a blueprint for delivering 37,000 homes between 2020 and 2038, but government inspectors ruled in March that Wiltshire Council - jointly led by the Lib Dems and an independent since 2025 - did not allocate enough land to meet the housing needs of the county.

In a close vote, full council agreed on Tuesday to formally withdraw it and start a new plan.

Councillor Chuck Berry, of the Conservatives, which ran the council prior to 2025, said this meant no longer being able to push back against "unreasonable" government housing targets set in 2024.

It meant "all the potential safeguards to stop unnecessary development have gone," he added.

Council leader, Lib Dem Ian Thorn, said this was "not a place any of us want to be in" and acknowledged a "horrendous amount of money" had been wasted.

"The government requires us to have a 30-month process now with an awful lot more houses, so the amount of work we will need to do will be enormous," he said.

The point of such local plans, which every local authority agrees to, is to ensure the right amount of housing is built where it is needed, and should allow for a more streamlined planning system.

This comes as councils are under increased pressure after the Labour government introduced local housebuilding targets in 2024, as part of the push to build 1.5 million homes in England by 2029.

Conservative group leader and former council leader Richard Clewer has previously said he was "livid" at the county's 81% increase in its housing target - up to 3,500 per year.

Meanwhile Berry said it was "really unfortunate" the council had decided not to stick to the old plan and push back against the government's "unreasonable" targets.

"Ultimately, I think it's a very sad situation, in that we're being pushed by government to do certain things.

"We have no real protection against unsolicited development going ahead," he said.

Thorn added Wiltshire had been "exposed for some time" to unwanted planning applications.

But he said said the council had no choice but to "get on with the job" of starting a new plan as soon as possible.

Wiltshire Council's cabinet will consider creating a new plan at its meeting in June.

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