Issue - meetings

The report sets out the commitments the Council has for the Somer Valley Enterprise Zone.

Cllr Paul Roper introduced the reports for all three items relating to the Somer Valley Enterprise Zone and moved the officer recommendation in respect of the LDO commitments.

Cllr Roper made the following points:

·  The Somer Valley Enterprise Zone is an important part of the delivery of the new Economic Strategy and is also a manifesto commitment for this administration.

·  The Somer Valley Enterprise Zone is intended create around 1,300 jobs of exactly the type we aspire to. Good quality, secure, well-paid, local jobs giving residents meaningful and fulfilling employment.

·  It will provide 1,300 local jobs for the towns and villages and hamlets around Paulton, Westfield, Radstock and Midsomer Norton, a population in the region of 30,000 people.

·  Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s nearly all of the employment in the Somer Valley was local.  Many local businesses have been lost including Great Mills DIY/Focus, Welton Bibby Bag Manufacturing and Purnells & Sons Printers which, at its height, provided 2,000 jobs.  Well over 1,000 jobs have been lost in comparatively recent times.

·  The consequence of this is that people now commute, census statistics from 2021 suggest that 30-50% of the economically active population in this area commute over six miles to work.

·  Out-commuting means that families need at least one car and that is a huge barrier to young people and the less affluent and this limits their opportunities.  More houses are also being built in the area.

·  The Council needs to create opportunities and aspiration for both current and future generations in these communities.

·  This authority recognised in 2007 that jobs lost needed to be replaced. This is when it originally allocated the land we are considering today as employment land. It was left to the free market to bring the development forward and it failed to do so. It is probable that delivery was seen as too complex and too expensive.

·  This administration has now stepped in and what we have before us today is the mechanism by which we can deliver this pioneering project – a green business park.

·  The LDO paper enables adoption of the LDO by cabinet and addresses the market failure in delivering SVEZ. It is a planning framework that, by way of compliance applications, prospective developers and businesses can seek planning permission on a de-risked basis. It gives them more certainty that an application will be approved, provided it meets with the strict criteria enshrined in the LDO. The LDO does not remove planning restrictions - it defines them in advance, giving businesses certainty as to what they need to do to make a successful application.

·  To enable the LDO to be brought forward to approval today, there has been a process that the planning authority has been through to ensure the scheme is compliant with all local and national policies.

·  These policies and statutory consultees include an environmental impact assessment, Ecology, Arboriculture, Air quality, Conservation, Archaeology, Highways, Drainage and Flood Risk and many more. The list of hurdles this scheme has  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56