Sustainability Appraisal - Supplementary Report [EXAM 115/115B]
Chapter 8
Conclusions and Next Steps
8.1 This report has presented Supplementary SA work that has been undertaken for the Central Bedfordshire Local Plan, seeking to address the comments made by the Inspectors' in their post-hearing letter to the Council in September 2019. The purpose of the Supplementary SA work has been to provide additional clarity on the issues raised, ensuring that an appropriate suite of reasonable alternative options for the spatial strategy have been considered in the SA and addressing potential inconsistencies.
8.2 The additional and revised appraisal work was presented in Chapters 4 and 5 of this report and the changes to the SA findings reported previously are summarised in Chapter 7.
8.3 CBC will submit this Supplementary SA to the Inspectors, alongside Technical Papers on Housing, Employment and Transport that consider its findings alongside other evidence, to demonstrate how the issues raised in their letter of 30th September 2019 have been resolved. Public consultation will be held on all new evidence and it is expected that further hearing sessions will be held.
8.4 Once CBC has proposed any modifications to the Local Plan that may result from this Supplementary SA work and the other work that is ongoing for the preparation of the Local Plan, those proposed changes will need to be subject to SA. At that point, consideration will also need to be given to the cumulative effects of the Local Plan as a whole, as it is proposed to be amended.
LUC
May 2020
