Report by Local Democracy Reporter – Eddie Bisknell
A planned new Derbyshire village containing thousands of homes is moving ahead, with the potential of more villages already touted.
Over the past few months Derbyshire Dales District Council has been making baby steps towards a new housing plan outlining space for 580 homes to be built per year until 2040.
While it is all subject to public consultation and up to 13 more years before legal “adoption”, a preferred option the council has been considering is lumping much of its mandated homes into a “new settlement”.
The council, as one of its options, had previously been looking to have up to 70 per cent of all its planned new homes in this new settlement, with the rest around its existing market towns of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Matlock and Wirksworth.
Following feedback from consultants, the council is now looking at a more conservative proportion due to the vast amount of evidence it needs to compile for a planned new village, including environmental surveys, many talks with land owners and prospective developers and infrastructure planning – all alongside selecting where a new village could go.
Instead, the council is set to plan for up to 15 per cent of its homes until 2040 to be catered for in this new settlement.
Through this it says 150 homes per year within the new settlement would be expected to be built, but only from 2035 until 2040, due to the amount of work still to be done – totalling 750 homes
That same metric would total 3,500 homes if it was the original planned 70 per cent option.
The council has not detailed the most recent “unmet need” figure, which is excess space required outside of housing sites that already have approval and are under way or have not started yet.
However, consultants hired by the council outline planning for 15 years of meeting the annual target, which would total 8,700 new homes and say the council can only showcase 1.36 years worth of future homes – 789.
In December, Cllr David Hughes, vice chair of the Local Plan Committee, had said the council had already identified land for 2,500 homes which were yet to be assessed.
The council, in agreement with the Peak District National Park, which takes up half of the Dales’ land mass and planning responsibilities but no major development, will take 415 homes per year (6,225 total) and the peak park 158 homes per year (2,370 total).
Despite this, the peak park has already said it will likely only be able to achieve 52 homes per year, leading to a 106-home per year shortfall which will need to be picked up by surrounding authorities, including those in other counties.
Consultants say there is no fixed definition for a “new settlement” but that garden villages are between 1,500 and 10,000 homes and garden towns are 10,000 or more homes.
They say 5,000-10,000 homes would be required to “enable a reasonable degree of self-containment – enabling a place to include a broad range of uses, services and facilities to cater to the needs of a new local population”.
Consultants say a key driver of the relevant new settlement size would be the development being large enough to support a new secondary school – which is 4,000-5,000 homes.
They say: “Given the embryonic stage of the idea, it is unlikely that there would be any delivery within the new plan period.
“The Council could potentially identify a broad location for growth, but this would be subject to having enough evidence to justify that broad area and at present it doesn’t have that evidence. Furthermore, sustainability appraisal would also need to be undertaken.
“It may be more appropriate to identify a direction of travel in the plan and set out the factors that would be of consideration to identifying where a new settlement would be supported and what it would need to achieve. This could be done through a revised vision, spatial strategy or in the supporting text.”
The revised plan is the option which has been chosen by the council, through its revision of a new settlement dropping from 70 per cent of new housing to 15 per cent in one of its key options, with high level policies on a new settlement to be explored.
A new council report says: “Further work would be undertaken on the development of a new settlement to accommodate any unmet needs.
“The council will need to do further work in identifying and bringing forward one or more new settlements between now and the next plan, given the complexities associated with new settlements.”
The council had planned to adopt its new Local Plan from September 2027, however this may be pushed back to early 2029 consultants say.
Derbyshire Dales District Council is due to be abolished on March 31, 2028, through local government reorganisation.
Councillors are to consider methodology for deciding new sites for the draft Local Plan in July, after which a six-week public consultation will take place, due to start in August, with submission to the Secretary of State for inspection in December, with hearings to follow in due course.
The potential site of the new village has not been suggested, but Darley Dale Town Council suggested in 2016 that it should be in the south of the district – away from the Peak District National Park.
In December, Cllr David Hughes, chair of the Local Plan Committee, said site searches will include an open call to developers and landowners and its own proactive searches, saying the authority must prove it has “left no stone unturned”.
Council officials said the authority may be able to approve a plan with fewer than the mandated annual homes target but only if it can prove it has explored all options to identify viable housing sites that can be developed by 2040.
Councillors said there are numerous approved plans for houses which had full planning permission but cannot be considered within the authority’s five-year housing supply because no construction work has begun.
Officials had said the appointed consultants were “very enthusiastic about new settlements” but that this would be a future aspiration for a further new Local Plan, only able to contribute on the very back end of the current review.
