Lancaster City Council has now announced when the examination hearings on the Local Plan are due to start.  The date - described as 'provisional' - is 1st April 2019.

 

The full text of the announcement, dated 20 December 2018, states

 

Hearing Dates Provisionally Scheduled

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Following the recent exchange of correspondence between the Inspector and the Council (this can be found in the drop down box, 'Local Plan Examination Library' under Section 5 and Section 6 below), Local Hearing Dates have been provisionally scheduled for the week commencing 1 April 2019 and the week commencing 8 April 2019.  There will be no hearing sessions on the following week (the week commencing 15 April 2019). Further sittings will be held in the week commencing 22 April 2019 should they be needed (in this week the hearing sessions would be on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday).

The Council will be consulting on additional evidence between Friday 4 January 2019 and Friday 15 February 2019. Further information will be made available on the Council’s Planning Policy Consultations webpages. The additional evidence and statements that will be the subject of consultation are listed within the Response from Lancaster City Council dated 23rd November 2018 (see LCC2, Section 6).

The reason why no hearings are scheduled for week commencing 15 April is presumably due to Easter - Good Friday is 19 April and Easter Monday the 22nd.  What additional evidence the Council will be consulting on isn't specified in the announcement, but we should find out tomorrow (!) - January 4th.

We will be arranging a CLOUD committee meeting very shortly to consider how we respond to the Council’s latest consultation and to prepare for the examination hearings.  We’ll issue a further Newsbrief after the committee meeting. Be prepared - it looks as though we may yet again have to ask CLOUD members to respond to the Council consultation!