Plymouth’s Planning Obligations Evidence Base

All development potentially has some impact on the environment and/or infrastructure and services. However, not all of these impacts are of such a nature or level of significance that they require mitigation through planning obligations.

It is important to ensure that planning obligations are negotiated on the basis of evidence of impacts and the cost of mitigating these impacts.

At the time when the Planning obligations and affordable housing supplementary planning document – first review was adopted (August 2010), the evidence of need was summarised in the Plymouth's planning obligations evidence base document below This evidence informed, in particular the broad distribution of infrastructure capacity throughout the city and the potential cost of mitigating development impacts per unit of development.

This document provides the justification for the policy framework currently in place, but it is not intended to be used to apply a generalised approach to the negotiation of planning obligations.

The Council will negotiate each planning obligation on a case by case basis, having regard to particular impacts of the development and the most up-to-date evidence of infrastructure capacity available at the time.

The following documents include relevant updates of evidence in relation to infrastructure capacity issues. This is not necessary a comprehensive list of updates and should not be considered as an alternative to engaging with the Council’s Planning Services through its Development Enquiry Service.

Updated primary care capacity map (August 2010) - [412KB]

Plymouth's planning obligations evidence base document - [2MB]