A revised Local Plan

The old Local Plan is dead; a new one is to be drawn up. Here is the text of an email from NNDC:

From: Planning Policy <Planning.Policy@north-norfolk.gov.uk>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2026 at 15:59
Subject: North Norfolk Local Plan Review & Call for Sites (20)

Dear Consultee,

Action may be required - please read the important information below regarding the review of the North Norfolk Local Plan and launch of a ‘Call for Sites’ consultation.

We are writing to you because we hold your contact information, as you or your organisation have previously been identified as a General or Statutory Consultee in relation to preparing the Local Plan for North Norfolk, have voluntarily signed up to our Local Plan Consultation Database to be kept informed, or have previously submitted representations to the Local Plan process.

Local Plan Review

The North Norfolk Local Plan 2024-2040 was adopted in December 2025. However, national planning policy and legislation have changed since then, including updated Government guidance on housing need. This means the Council is required to begin work on a new Local Plan to make sure that planning policies remain up to date and effective, and that growth needs are planned for.

The Council is required to give at least four months’ notice of its intention to commence Local Plan preparation under the new plan-making system, and to publish a timetable setting out the key dates for preparing the Local Plan or any Supplementary Plans. This is currently scheduled to take place by or before 30 June 2026. Further information will be provided on our Local Plan review web page when available.

Processing your data
Under the previous Local Plan process, the Council collected and used your contact data to keep you informed of key stages and consultation opportunities. As we begin preparation of a new Local Plan, we will continue to use your data for this purpose. We are also taking this opportunity to update you on how your data will be used and to provide you with an opportunity to review your preferences.

The processing of personal data is necessary for preparing a Local Plan, a statutory function undertaken by the Council under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and associated regulations. This processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, rather than based on consent. In some cases, the Council is required to consult certain bodies as part of the Local Plan process, including statutory consultees and general consultation bodies (such as community groups, business interests, and groups representing protected characteristics).

We will only use your contact details to notify you of Local Plan consultations and opportunities to make representations. We do not use this database for marketing purposes.

We may share your personal data, where necessary, with parties involved in the preparation and examination of the Local Plan. This may include the Planning Inspectorate, an independent Programme Officer appointed to support the Local Plan at examination, and other organisations or service providers acting on behalf of the Council where it is appropriate to do so and necessary safeguards are in place.

As we rely on a public task as our lawful basis, you also have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. Requests may be sent to data.protection@north-norfolk.gov.uk

Where you do so, we will consider your request in line with data protection legislation. As part of preparing a Local Plan under current planning legislation, the Council is required to engage with certain consultation bodies and the wider community at key stages. Where you have been identified as a relevant consultation body, we may need to continue to use your contact details to notify you of these consultation stages. In all cases, we will ensure that any continued use of your data is necessary, proportionate, and limited to fulfilling these statutory consultation requirements.

• If you do not wish to be contacted in future, please email your request to planning.policy@north-norfolk.gov.uk
• If you wish to amend your contact information, please email your request to planning.policy@north-norfolk.gov.uk

We will consider any request in line with data protection legislation and the Council’s statutory duties.

Please respond by no later than Monday 29 June 2026. If we don’t hear from you, we will continue to process your data for the purpose of preparing a new Local Plan in line with our privacy notice.

Call for Sites

As an early stage in preparing the new Local Plan, the Council has today launched a ‘Call for Sites’. This invites landowners, developers, agents, organisations, and individuals to submit land to be considered for future development.

Update on Fox Hill Plantation

 In December 2022 North Norfolk District Council refused permission for a ‘change of use of land to storage of caravans and boats, siting of 39 storage containers, siting of portable building for office use and erection of boundary fence’ at Fox Hill Plantation on the Morston road.

The applicant appealed the decision last October, a matter we covered then.

The Planning Inspectorate has just dismissed the appeal. An earlier application, in 2020, was also turned down by NNDC and it seems unlikely now that the scheme will ever go ahead.

(Meanwhile we have been monitoring the NNDC website for any news about Lanpro’s proposal for land west of North Street. Nothing has yet come up, and it has been about a year since residents were sent the circular describing the plans.) 

The razing of Fox Hill Plantation

You may already know that another planning application was submitted for Fox Hill Plantation on the Morston Road.

The history of planning applications for this site may be viewed here. The latest application, having been rejected by NNDC, has gone to appeal.

The proposal would see the copse turned into a site for 39 storage containers, with additional storage for caravans and boats, as well as a facility for portable buildings for office use, together with the erection of a boundary fence. It was rejected some time ago. The site is in the North Norfolk Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and would be served by an unclassified road close to a primary school. The change of use would increase the level of traffic – particularly of goods vehicles, some of them heavy – between Morston and the church crossroads, adding to the problems in North Street.

Such a development is unlikely to provide much in the way of job creation; the coast is at capacity for boats already. The potential harms outweigh whatever benefits a development like this would bring to the area.

North Norfolk has some of the darkest night skies in the country. A storage compound of the sort proposed would undoubtedly have security lights. These would affect the whole area between Langham and Morston. And because the site is situated on a hillside, there is also the possibility of polluted runoff affecting adjoining fields.

If you wish to make any comments online please quote the appeal reference

APP/Y2620/W/23/3319567

and go to the Planning Inspectorate’s website. Letters should be addressed to

Safia Kaiser
The Planning Inspectorate
Temple Quay House
2 The Square
Bristol
BS1 6PN

The deadline for comments is 6 November 2023, so please act as soon as you can.

The more opposition we can raise, the better the chances of scotching this scheme once and for all, so please also consider copying your comments to NNDC. Emails should be sent to planning@north-norfolk.gov.uk and letters to

The Chief Planning Officer
North Norfolk District Council
Council Offices
Holt Road
Cromer
Norfolk
NR27 9EN

Affordable housing

Image credit: David Hignett; licence

Although local authorities had been providing a measure of accommodation for the needy and badly paid since the nineteenth century, the Housing Act of 1919 ushered in a period of intensified building of council houses. The heyday of council-house construction came when a Labour government was returned after the Second World War, and particularly after the New Towns Act of 1947 and the sweeping reforms of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1949.

As part of the market-led policies brought in by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, the Housing Act of 1988 allowed the selling-off of council properties; there was a brief revival of building under Labour in 2010, but the wholesale construction of new council housing has generally been replaced by a system of grants to developers and local authorities.

‘Affordable housing’ in the UK refers to properties offered for sale or rent at below the current market value. According to the government, affordable housing should be ‘social rented, affordable rented and intermediate housing, provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market’.

On 31 August 2021, the Communities Secretary announced an allocation of £8.6 billion of funding for affordable housing, with the intention of providing some 119,000 homes by 2026, of which about 29,600 are to be made available for social (i.e. below market value) rent. £5.2 billion of this sum is earmarked for schemes outside London.

In 2019-20 a total of 57,644 affordable homes were provided in England, as follows: 24,551 affordable rented homes, 23,122 shared ownership homes, 6,359 London affordable rent homes, and 5,716 social rented homes. Some 92% of affordable homes offered in this period were newly built.

Kinds of affordable housing

In a shared ownership scheme, the occupants buy part of the equity from a housing association, typically 25%, and pay rent on the rest, together with a service charge.

Social rented housing is let at rents below market level to ‘people whose needs are not adequately served by the commercial housing market’. Social rented housing is usually owned by local authorities. Properties may not be let for more than 80% of the local market rent.

Affordable private rented housing must also be at least 20% cheaper than local market rents. It is provided by the private market. Such properties are more widely available in developing tenures such as build-to-rent.

The government’s First Homes scheme offers first-time buyers a discount when they purchase a new-build home in England; First Homes must be sold at a discount of at least 30% against their market value. After the discount, the maximum amount First Homes can be sold for is £250,000, or £420,000 in Greater London. Local authorities can impose lower price caps if they wish. Not all new properties are available under the scheme, but the government says First Homes must account for at least 25% of affordable housing sold by developers.

Rent to Buy is for those with an annual household income below £80,000, who cannot buy a suitable home without help, and who have no outstanding credit problems. This scheme helps those buyers who cannot raise a deposit make progress towards eventually owning a home. Under it, housing associations offer properties for reduced rent, usually around 20% less than the market rate.

Intermediate rent, also known as affordable rent, was introduced as a new tenure in 2010. It allows housing associations to let properties out at 80% of local market rent levels – but to working people with household incomes of less than £66,000 (or £80,000 for larger homes).

Of course, house prices vary greatly across the country; a housing cost-to-income ratio would be a more effective way of ensuring affordable housing is truly affordable from area to area. The housing charity Shelter proposes that ‘affordable’ should classify as no more than 35% of a household’s net income.

The definition of ‘affordable housing’ is thus quite complex. The government’s intention is where possible to encourage home ownership, but it also recognises that a thriving rental market is necessary for many reasons. As a general rule of thumb, when a developer of so-called ‘market-led’ housing is required by a local authority to provide a percentage of affordable homes, each is offered at about 80% of its perceived market value, with the shortfall being sought from the government.

The Parish Council questionnaire

The Parish Council has told us that it is about to distribute a questionnaire to find out what residents think about the proposal to build 35 houses on land west of North Street.

You can simply say you are for or against the proposal, or qualify your approval of it if certain conditions are met.

There are five basic reasons to be in favour of the proposal.

1. It will enrich the landowner involved, who is coincidentally the Vice Chair of the Parish Council;

2. It will enrich the developers;

3. It will provide employment for construction workers for the 18-24 months during which the site is being landscaped and the houses put up;

4. It will increase the population of the village, currently about 350, by some 50-100 souls;

5. It may provide some measure of affordable housing in Langham.

If you broadly approve of the scheme but have reservations, the questionnaire offers the following options:

1. You need reassurance about safe entry to and exit from the development;

2. You would like to see a reduction in the number of houses proposed or a guarantee that the number would not increase from 35;

3. You would like a proportion of the homes to be affordable;

4. You would like to see ‘legal protection to ensure that the homes cannot be used as second or holiday homes (if we think this could be possible)’;

5. You have other concerns.

Safe entry to and exit from the development

Access to the site must be made either from North Street or Binham Road. In either event, most of this extra traffic will use the crossroads by the church. The line of sight when emerging there from North Street is bad enough, but coming the other way, from Field Dalling Road, it is positively dangerous: so dangerous in fact that drivers must nose forward into Binham Road in order to see what’s coming.

An exit into Binham Road would also be dangerous, given the way the road curves, even if the existing and historic (it was once the village school) Parish Room were to be demolished; Lanpro have mooted providing a new village hall.

Prompted by a previous planning application for the same piece of land, the Highways Department at Norfolk County Council voiced grave concerns about the implications for road safety.

They also commented that the village is in need of more footways. Walking east from the Cockthorpe road, one can follow for a while the safe footway provided during construction of the St Mary’s estate, but at Astley Cottage this runs out and one must cross the road, again with a poor line of sight, to a narrow footway which becomes even narrower when approaching the crossroads. Having crossed over and with the church on one’s right, this narrow footway soon ends. After that, almost all the way to the Blakeney road, one must walk in the carriageway – which is often obstructed by parked vehicles.

Most of the length of North Street is served by a safe footway on its east side, but in Field Dalling Road there is no footway at all.

Fewer houses

Reduction in the number of homes below a certain point, particularly if some of them are to be designated as affordable, may make any development uneconomic. Developers fiercely resist such a reduction. However, it is possible that the figure of 35 dwellings has been put forward with the intention of appearing to compromise later by settling for fewer, a suspicion given credence by the fact that the number proposed in 2019 was only 27, four of which were to have been flats.

Affordable homes

The definition of ‘affordable’ is elastic and is discussed in this BBC article from 2016. In rough terms, an affordable home is sold at something like 80% of the market value. Developers may be required by district councils to include a number of such properties in their plans, but of course each one reduces the profitability of the development, so there is much negotiation about this before full planning consent is given.

Assuming that the new market-rate houses proposed for Langham are comparable to those on the St Mary’s estate, albeit with much smaller gardens, the affordable homes would cost something in the region of £400,000.

Using the basic mortgage calculator found here, and assuming the purchasers can supply a £50,000 deposit, and assuming the current mortgage rate of 4.5%, they will need to find £1945 a month to service a £350,000 repayment mortgage. Over the full term they will pay £583,398, which includes interest of £233,398. These are of course approximate figures. The historic bank rate since the seventeenth century has been about 5%. Given the current rate of inflation, we could soon see it go considerably higher than that.

Restrictions on occupation

In its questionnaire the Parish Council itself expresses doubt as to whether covenants restricting the occupation of these houses will be enforceable, a doubt we can only endorse. In any case, such covenants would reduce the value of the houses and make the whole scheme less financially viable.

In legal circles it is known that restrictive covenants can be and are breached all the time. If such breaches remain uncontested at law, the covenants eventually become null and void.

As to the designation of a country property as a second home, it is common practice for someone living in, say, London to designate the London house as the second home and the country property as the primary residence, neatly circumventing whatever impositions a local authority seeks to make.

Other concerns

These are many and various. The scheme if built would run a coach and horses through numerous NNDC core strategy policies, especially concerning development in the countryside and in ‘small growth villages’, of which Langham is a prime example.

If you want to look these policies up on the NNDC website, they are as follows:

SS 1: Spatial Strategy for North Norfolk

SS 2: Development in the Countryside

SS 4: Environment

SS 6: Access and Infrastructure

HO 1: Dwelling Mix and Type

HO 2: Provision of Affordable Housing

HO 3: Affordable Housing in the Countryside

EN 1: Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Broads (PDF)

EN 2: Protection and Enhancement of Landscape and Settlement Character

EN 8: Protecting and Enhancing the Historic Environment

EN 9: Biodiversity & Geology

EN 10: Development and Flood Risk

CT 1: Open Space Designations

CT 5: The Transport Impact of New Development

CT 6: Parking Provision

In brief, this is a greenfield site lying within both the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Langham Conservation Area. Building over it will irreversibly change the character of the village and put unwonted pressure on local infrastructure, especially the road system.

For these reasons alone the proposal is highly unsuitable and, we submit, without merit.

The site

Image credit: Gaynor Pannier