Policy GESP11: Employment Land

To ensure the potential for growth in jobs and incomes and for improved economic prosperity are not constrained, the GESP target is to develop about 150 hectares of land for B1, B2 and B8 uses in the Greater Exeter area by 2040. Delivery to meet this target is proposed from the following sources (which allow for a headroom of approximately 200% against the overall target):

1. Approximately 130 hectares on GESP allocations, providing for transformational sectors, strategic scale employment growth or to develop self-contained new neighbourhoods within GESP allocations
2. Approximately 330 hectares on existing planning commitments, subject to further assessment and review in local plan preparation
3. Further sites allocated in future local and neighbourhood development plans which achieve an appropriate combination of the following objectives:
4. Improve the choice of sites and buildings available for employment uses
   1. Rebalance local or sub-regional economies
   2. Maintain a flexible and competitive market in employment land and buildings
   3. Support viability and deliverability
   4. Take advantage of local economic potential
   5. Meet other local needs or objectives
   6. Take advantage of existing or proposed heat networks

6.17 Employment land means land to be developed for business, industry, manufacturing and warehousing uses (Planning Use Classes Order B1, B2 & B8). It has been a long term objective of planning policies in the Greater Exeter area to allocate and develop sufficient employment Evidence for the GESP identifies that this need continues; the Economic Development Needs Assessment indicates that about 20% of jobs in the Greater Exeter area are contained within these kind of buildings. Overall the Economic Development Needs Assessment identifies a need for 150 hectares of employment land to be developed in the Greater Exeter area by 2040. If small scale services are included as a minor element of an employment site providing support services for the companies within that site (catering and childcare for example) these could be counted as part of the B – space land area for monitoring purposes.

6.18 The delivery of employment land has not been straightforward, with the costs associated with bringing forward such sites and the riskiness of the sector acting as barriers to development at planned In addition, a number of major existing employment areas within Exeter are being considered for repurposing to bring about new residential or mixed use neighbourhoods, and some of those existing businesses are not suitable to be retained in the same location as high quality urban residences. Therefore draft policy GESP11 incorporates and maintains significant headroom in the amount of land permitted and allocated overall. The provision of employment land within each council area in the Greater Exeter area will be reviewed through the local plan processes. It should take account of, but not be constrained by, this policy which gives considerable flexibility to the local plans reflecting their emerging economic needs.

6.19 There are three sources of potential delivery for new employment land; allocations within the GESP, existing commitments and future local plan allocations:

GESP Allocations

The GESP will aim to allocate about 130 hectares of land for employment development, sites to be identified in the next version of the GESP. Housing-led allocations are likely to include employment development in accordance with the tenets of the draft GESP vision, and will need to contain mechanisms to ensure that such employment is delivered alongside the housing as part of mixed use places.

Existing Commitments

There is a lot of capacity for economic growth in the 330 hectares of existing commitments (sites with permissions already granted or allocations in local plans and neighbourhood development plans). However, these commitments have often been slow to come forward, some having been allocated or permitted for many years. The reasons for this are various – high infrastructure costs, poor access or lack of progress with making planning applications and land values which may encourage landowners to wait and see if other, higher value uses may be developed on the sites in future. It is important that the reasons for any non-progress are analysed in future local plan reviews, in order to ensure that there is a continued supply of deliverable sites, and the allocated sites continue to be appropriate and realistic. The solutions may involve replacing sites with alternative allocations, investment in infrastructure, pump priming or direct delivery by a public sector body.

Future Local Plan Allocations

Alongside reviews of existing commitments, future local plan reviews by the Greater Exeter councils will give the opportunity to consider further sites suitable for economic development. The focus will be on local economic needs, taking account of factors such as those listed in draft policy GESP11.

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