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Greater Exeter Strategic Plan

Policy GESP39: Delivering Homes and Communities

To deliver the homes needed at a faster pace and at a higher quality, a series of mechanisms will be put in place. The Greater Exeter councils will:

Establish publicly accountable, locally-led development corporations to pursue quality, certainty and pace of development delivery

  1. Proactively bid for and, if appropriate, establish, joint ventures to secure further external infrastructure funding
  2. Seek additional legal powers and planning freedoms where these would support delivery
  3. Where abnormal development and early infrastructure costs are proven to significantly undermine development viability, consider the provision of short term, repayable financial support, in conjunction with Homes England or other bodies, to enable early starts and faster delivery
  4. Where feasible, consider direct involvement in land assembly, to bring forward sites more quickly and comprehensively
  5. Apply a proactive approach to preparing masterplans, infrastructure planning, development management, investment and delivery

10.11 The majority of sites being consider for the GESP are likely to be large, complex and in multiple land ownerships. They will also require significant up-front investment in infrastructure for their delivery. These factors are likely to make them challenging to bring forward quickly. It is therefore a key requirement of the GESP that development delivery is managed proactively with a more hands-on approach from local and national government. A key part of this will be the establishment of one or more locally led development corporations to bring forward development at the largest sites. In addition, the Greater Exeter councils will continue working with Homes England and other partners to bring forward development proactively and in doing so will consider providing finance and support in land assembly. This will not only increase the pace of development which comes forward on these sites but will also improve development quality. Both these objectives are critical to the achievement of the GESP draft vision.

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