As set out under Policies S/DS and S/SH, we are very concerned that the proposed development strategy ignores the need for suitable levels of growth to come forwards in the rural areas in order to maintain the vitality of rural communities. Without growth, facilities and services in these villages will not be viable in the long term.

The proposed settlement boundary policy compounds this issue by severely restricting growth outside settlement boundaries. There will be a need for both market and affordable housing growth in all villages during the plan period and to resolve this issue, we consider that some growth should be allocated to all settlements or a flexible policy should be adopted to allow a certain level of development on the edge of all villages according to their position in the settlement hierarchy. One such flexible policy would be to draw settlement boundaries more loosely so that they include small sites promoted for development on the edge of villages. In this way, it would be possible allow suitable sites to come forward under Policy S/SB.