The Portfolio Holder Decisions/Leader Decisions meeting of Warwickshire County Council, held on Friday 4 September 2026, approved the draft response and covering letter for submission to Stratford-on-Avon District Council regarding the South Warwickshire Local Plan – Regulation 19 Consultation.

South Warwickshire Local Plan – Regulation 19 Consultation Response

The meeting resolved to approve the draft response and covering letter for submission to Stratford-on-Avon District Council as part of the South Warwickshire Local Plan Team. This response is crucial for ensuring the District Councils understand Warwickshire County Council's views before the Local Plan is submitted.

The South Warwickshire Local Plan (SWLP) is a significant document that will guide development across Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick districts until 2050. It aims to ensure that new homes, businesses, employment, and infrastructure are carefully planned and supported by necessary facilities such as schools, health services, and green spaces. The SWLP replaces existing development plan policies and provides a framework for sustainable growth, environmental protection, and place-making.

Warwickshire County Council's response highlighted several areas of concern. These included the reliance on Long Marston Airfield without a recognised, funded highways scheme to support growth, and the proposal to deliver over 6,000 homes through a dispersal process, which the County Council believes will create issues for adult social care and education provision. Specifically, many proposed housing sites are expected to increase the number of pupils requiring home-to-school transport due to distance, lack of safe walking routes, or local school capacity. This is anticipated to place a considerable ongoing financial pressure on the new Unitary Authority.

Transport Planning and SLR Consulting have been working with the South Warwickshire Plan Team to assess impacts on highway networks. However, ongoing revisions by the SWLP Team mean that further modelling assessments are continuing, considering active and sustainable travel, development quantum assumptions, and the costs of mitigation schemes.

Concerns were also raised about school places, with the County Council expressing disappointment that their concerns, shared throughout the plan's development, appear not to have been fully addressed. Similarly, Adult Social Care is concerned about the lack of delivery mechanisms for care infrastructure, noting an identified shortfall of approximately 609 extra care housing units across the districts.

The timing of the consultation, during the peak holiday season, was noted as unfortunate, making an already tight deadline even more pressured. Several services had requested an extension, but the District Councils were firm that no extensions would be granted. The County Council officers are also managing comments on other significant planning documents during this period, including the Nuneaton and Bedworth Local Plan, the Tysoe Neighbourhood Plan, the Rugby Borough Examination in Public, and the North Warwickshire Local Plan.

The response includes input from various County Council services, including Adult Social Care, Developer Negotiations and Contributions, Education, Flood Risk Management, Employability and Skills, Public Health, Fire and Rescue, Regeneration and Town Centre, Economy and Skills/Inward Investment, Ecology, Transport Planning, the Landscape Team, and the Country Parks and Green Spaces Service. Highways Development Management has been involved throughout the earlier stages of site assessment.

The response does not include input from the Warwickshire Property and Development Group (WPDG), who are able to provide their own response, to ensure impartiality across sites.

The decision to approve the draft response and covering letter was made by Councillor Stephen Shaw, Portfolio Holder for Transport and Planning. The urgency procedure was invoked because the consultation deadline was 8 September 2026, and the response needed to be submitted promptly.

The South Warwickshire Local Plan covers the period 2025-2050 and will guide development, infrastructure delivery, environmental protection, and place-making across the combined Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick District Council areas.