Epsom & Ewell Borough’s Submission Local Plan was submitted to the Planning Inspector for Independent Examination in March 2025. It had been informed by an evidence base following consultation with residents and local stakeholders.
The submitted Local Plan provides less than 50% of the identified housing need within the borough which the Resident Association controlled Borough Council considered to strike the balance of meeting development needs whilst protecting the borough’s green spaces, heritage and character.
Opposition councillors and environmental lobby groups argued against allocating any Green Belt land for development. To do this would have almost certainly rendered the Local Plan unsound according to the Government’s local plan regulations and advice. Recent experience in Elmbridge Council also demonstrated that an urban only approach presented at its examination which fell well short of that borough’s housing need resulted in that plan having to be withdrawn and started again with green belt sites included.
At our own Examination Hearings last year concerns were raised that the Council is not doing enough to meet its housing needs through the submitted local plan (47% of the housing need set out in the standard method that applied at the time when the plan was prepared) notwithstanding the fact that some Green Belt sites had reluctantly been included to bolster the housing delivery target that the Government sets us.
This resulted in our Local Plan Inspector requesting the council undertake two additional pieces of work, one in relation to Green Belt sites contained with the Land Availability Assessment (LAA) and the other in relation to whether some additional urban sites identified in the LAA can be considered to be developable.
The Inspectors letter to the Council dated 12 February 2026 makes it clear that for the examination to proceed it is essential that the Council assesses the suitability of additional Green Belt sites for potential allocation. Failure to do so will result in the Submitted Local Plan being found to be unsound.
So this is why you are being asked to give your views on the additional site allocations proposed. It is not something that the Council could sensibly ignore. We cannot risk the plan being found unsound and having to start again with much greater housing target figures required of us through more recent Government guidance.
It is vital that the borough has an up-to-date Local Plan to ensure that local people have a greater say on how our communities are developed in the future, and that we are in a stronger position to defend against unsuitable speculative planning proposals.
The public consultation is open until 15 June Local Plan Examination: Post Hearing Consultation on Additional Documents Submitted by the Council – Epsom & Ewell Planning Policy Consultations and the results of this will be considered at an additional Examination Hearing on 2 July 2026.
