The Lewisham Council meeting on 11 February 2025 was scheduled to include discussions about a range of topics in the council’s draft local plan, including a proposed increase in the target for new housing delivery. Proposed changes to the plan included a series of modifications to the “Lewisham Local Plan: Proposed Submission Document”, an addendum to the “Integrated Impact Assessment”, and a schedule of policy map changes. These documents were provided to the attendees for the meeting, but no information is available about what was actually discussed during the meeting.

Lewisham Local Plan

This report was scheduled to be presented to the council for their feedback on proposed changes to the draft Lewisham Local Plan.

The Council, as the local planning authority, has a statutory duty to maintain an up-to-date local plan that covers the whole of Lewisham.

The report included a timeline of the process for the adoption of the Lewisham Local Plan. The current scheme was adopted in December 2020, and since that time the council has carried out two rounds of public consultation. The “Proposed Submission Document” was published and consulted on in Spring 2023, after which it was submitted to the Secretary of State for examination in November 2023.

The examination in public process has included hearing sessions held during Summer 2024, during which people could engage with the plan-making process. Since the hearing sessions, the Planning Inspectorate instructed the council to propose modifications to the plan. These proposed modifications were prepared in collaboration with the Planning Inspectorate, and the report scheduled to be discussed in the 11 February meeting sought to agree their release for public consultation.

Because the modifications were prepared in collaboration with the Planning Inspectorate, the council did not have the ability to unilaterally change them, and so the report recommended that the council approve the modifications for release as quickly as possible.

The report described the two categories of modification that are scheduled for discussion. “Main Modifications” are described as:

substantive amendments to the new Local Plan that have an impact on how its spatial strategy, planning policies, and site allocations will be applied through decision-taking.

“Additional Modifications” are described as:

essentially comprised of corrections – including to spelling, grammar, formatting, or factual data.

These modifications arose as a result of:

• The Planning Inspectorate’s review of the “Proposed Submission Document”
• Discussion with stakeholders during the Examination in Public process
• Agreement with partners as part of “Statements of Common Ground”
• Penalties imposed by the government as a result of last year's Housing Delivery Test.

The report includes a table summarising the modifications to the Lewisham Local Plan¹. The report also includes appendices containing the Inspectors' post hearing letter, the full list of the proposed main modifications, and the full list of the proposed additional modifications.

Appendix E: Integrated Impact Assessment Addendum Final 20 January 2025

This document describes the effect of the proposed changes to the Lewisham Local Plan on the previously adopted “Integrated Impact Assessment”, and the results of an assessment of the impact of the changes on eleven different assessment topics².

Appendix D: Schedule of Policies Map Changes Final 20 January 2025

This document describes the proposed changes to the Policies Map, which illustrates geographically the areas that are impacted by the policies in the Lewisham Local Plan.

The report describes that:

The Policies Map is not defined in statute as a development plan document and so the Inspectors do not have the power to recommend Main Modifications to it.

The role of the Policies Map is to illustrate geographically the application of policies in the plan. Where Main Modifications are proposed to policies within the plan, there may be consequential amendments required for the geographical illustration of the policies. If the geographical illustration of a policy is flawed, the policy will be unsound. In such circumstances, therefore, the Inspectors ask the Council to draw up a proposed change to what is shown on the submission policies map.

The report provides a table that summarises the locations of all of the proposed changes to the policies map³.