RD
BACKGROUND
 Under the revised planning system, the city’s planning policies are set out in a number of different documents rather than a single Unitary
Development Plan.
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The city council has to produce a Local Development Scheme (LDS), which identifies the planning documents that it will produce and the timescale for doing so.
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The current LDS commits the city council to producing a Core Strategy
(which sets the overall planning strategy for the city), a Statement of
Community Involvement (which sets out how stakeholders will be involved in the planning process), an Area Action Plan for Pendleton, and a series of “Supplementary Planning Documents” (SPDs) covering a range of detailed issues such as housing, greenspace, house extensions, and planning obligations.
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The LDS will need to be reviewed in the short term to add two further documents - a Waste plan for Greater Manchester (which AGMA is committed to); and a Design SPD (which is needed to support the HMR process, as well as to raise design standards across the city more generally).
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Performance against the LDS is now a Best Value Performance
Indicator. Therefore, if we include documents in the LDS but are unable to deliver against the published timescales for their production then this could result in the BVPI being failed as whole.
AREA ACTION PLANS (AAPs)
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Given the level of transformation envisaged within parts of the city, particularly in Central Salford, there is considerable demand for
“statutory” plans to be produced to guide development and support
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CPOs.
Both the UDP Inspector and GONW have encouraged the city council to produce more AAPs, particularly within the HMR area.
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Some of our development partners are also keen for more AAPs to be produced, e.g. Countryside in Lower Broughton.
DELIVERING AREA ACTION PLANS
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It takes at least three years to produce an AAP, because of the convoluted statutory processes involved. Therefore, they are not the most responsive tool.
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Experience from the early stages of the Pendleton AAP process indicates that producing AAPs is very resource intensive.
The city council’s planning resources are already stretched in delivering the existing commitments in the LDS.

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Ideally, a dedicated team of at least 6-8 people (including planning, transport, urban design, estates and environmental expertise, and supported by specialist consultants as and when required) would deliver a phased programme of AAPs across the city.
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However, current resource constraints make this impossible at present, and therefore capacity to deliver AAPs is severely restricted.
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Nevertheless, there are real pressures for additional AAPs, particularly one for Lower Broughton. In this latter case, a commitment to producing an AAP could have some bearing on the GONW position on the planning application recently received from Countryside, which raises some significant planning policy issues. There will need to be more discussion at a corporate level about how we can effectively resource and/or procure the AAP process, particularly if it is judged essential to progress a formal AAP for Lower Broughton in the short term.
ALTERNATIVES
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In some areas, it may be more appropriate to bring forward non-statutory neighbourhood plans (e.g. Weaste). These could be produced much more quickly than AAPs (about 12 months), but would not have anywhere near the same weight in decision-making as an AAP (although public consultation and formal Council adoption would give them some weight).
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However, AAPs will still be more appropriate in the key areas of transformation.