Highlights:

The Heart of the South West devolution bid highlights a number of challenges facing the LEP area which planning has a key role in addressing. These are:

 Comparative productivity is 29th out of 39 LEP areas
 An aging workforce and major skills shortages reported
 Our performance remains low on key productivity measures: wages, innovation, inward investment exports and global trade
 Disproportionate growth in our older population is placing unsustainable burdens on our services
 Strategic infrastructure has good coverage, but is incomplete
 Insufficient capacity of the road network and motorway junctions
 Uncompetitive travel times to London and the south east
 Incidents and extreme weather threatens transport resilience
 Housing supply not keeping up with demand
 Threats to National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Page 5: revised timetable pushes back a GESP agreement to not earlier than April 2022. HOWEVER, this is almost certainly a spelling error, as on page 11 this is contradicted:

Once adopted it will supersede specified strategic parts of the East Devon Local Plan, Exeter Core Strategy, Exeter Local Plan, Mid Devon Local Plan (once adopted), Teignbridge Local Plan Parts 1 and 2 and any other Development Plan Documents as necessary. The preparation timetable is as follows:
 Site Options and Draft Policies – June 2020
 Draft Plan – November 2020
 Publication (Proposed Submission) – February 2022
 Submission – July 2022
 Examination – September 2022
Adpotion : April 2023
(not April 2022)

Page 8: The Greater Exeter Strategic Plan will cover the local planning authority areas of East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon and Teignbridge (i.e. those Councils’ administrative areas excluding Dartmoor National Park). It will be prepared jointly by those four local planning authorities with the support of Devon County Council under Section 28 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act. It will:

• set an overall vision and strategy for the area in the context of national and other high level policy and in particular climate emergency declarations and the NPPF;
• contain policies and proposals for strategic and cross boundary issues where these are best dealt with at a larger-than-local scale;
• set the overall amount of growth for the period 2020 – 2040;
• promote the Liveable Exeter vision by allocating urban regeneration sites in the city;
• implement the overall vision and strategy by allocating strategic sites of 500 or more
homes which may include urban extensions and new settlements ;
• provide districts’ local plans with targets for non-strategic development