The Corporate Director – Communities submitted a report, the purpose of which, was to seek Members approval to adopt SPG16 - Educational Facilities and Residential Development as Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) to the Bridgend Local Development Plan (LDP).

He stated that Members will be well aware that the Council has a duty to ensure that good quality educational facilities are available to the children and young people of the County Borough. This was a key objective of both the Corporate Plan and the Well-being of Future Generations Act.

The development of new housing in the County Borough, places existing education facilities under increased pressure, he explained.

SPG16 was a key tool in alleviating that pressure, by providing advice and guidance in relation to the circumstances in which the Council may justifiably seek financial contributions towards the provision of educational facilities.

In summary the SPG sets out:

•           The National and local Planning Policy context and legislation;

•           The Council’s own policy and practice relating to education;

•           Guidance notes explaining the circumstances, mechanisms for calculating the likely contributions;

•           Examples of how this is done; and

•           Guidance on how the policy will be administered.

In terms of the current situation, the Strategic Planning Team Leader advised, that the Council already has an SPG16, which had successfully generated millions of pounds towards school projects. However, the current version was adopted in 2010 and in recent times, officers have found that the level of contributions being generated was failing to keep up with the cost of modern construction practices. So a small working group was therefore formed, in order to undertake a formal review and produce an updated draft, and on the 16th January 2020, members of the Development Control Committee approved the draft version of the SPG as the basis for public consultation.

A 6-week period of consultation was held between 21 February and 3 April 2020, with the consultation advertised in the manner described in paragraph 4.2 of the report.

By the end of the consultation period seven representations were received on the draft SPG. These representations were summarised in Appendix 1 to the report.

On 21st January 2021, the Development Control Committee considered all of the representations and agreed the changes to be made to the document, in light of the comments received. These are now incorporated as amendments to the SPG attached at Appendix 2 (to the report).

Members would note from the bullet points at paragraph 4.4, that the proposed amendments are limited to relatively simple points of clarification, which reflected the amount of work that went into the draft SPG, from the outset. The Strategic Planning Team Leader acknowledged the input of the School Modernisation team and that of Cllr Amanda Williams, who both gave valuable contributions to the review and production of the draft SPG and ensured that Members had a voice in the process.

The Strategic Planning Team Leader then concluded the report, by referring to its relation to the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

The Cabinet Members who covered this portfolio, welcomed the fact that more reliance was being put on new housing developers in terms of seeking a suitable financial contribution from them for education provision, where this was required, as a result of the construction of new developments. They were also pleased to note an increased cross-curricula approach between the Planning and Education sections of the Council, that would assist in the development proposals that would be fed into the new Local Development Plan (LDP).

A Member hoped that discussions would continue with Welsh Government in the future in order to seek funding for education provision, particularly in areas where there was scope to provide an increase of new residential developments.

A Member referred to contributions towards educational infrastructure and the example of the statistical formula that was used in this regard as referred to in the report’s supporting information. However, he asked if this accounted for younger children also that would move forward to primary then secondary education and if the information Council were basing its projections upon, sufficiently aligned to future education provisions and the new residential developments they would serve, or was the projection so made, more of a ‘snap shot in time.’

The Strategic Planning Team Leader, advised that in terms of the SPG, factors such as the cost of facilities per child were looked at and updated in accordance with Welsh Government advice and guidance, as well as future population projections within locations, ie looking at capacity in existing schools compared with the number of residential units. Also, in conjunction with the above, the population of a particular school for the next 3, 4 or 5 years etc, was projected. All these issues then gave rise to how overall calculations were worked out in comparison with the pupil yield in the SPG.  

RESOLVED:                            That Council:

(1)        Adopted SPG16 – Educational Facilities and Residential Development (Appendix 2 to the report) as Supplementary Planning Guidance to the adopted Bridgend Local Development Plan.

(2)        Agreed that the SPG, in its adopted form, be published on the Council’s website.