A £1M plan is set to be agreed to guide building development across Bolton with housebuilding set to become “more and more of a priority.”

The Bolton Local Plan includes a range of policies, some of them more than 10 years old, aimed and went before the council cabinet review earlier this year.

Now a full meeting of the council is set to agree to a three year, £1M process to update the plan to take account of how priorities and targets to build houses will change.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “It’s very important that we have a local plan because one of the priorities that local authorities have is to facilitate house building, which will become more and more of a priority under the Labour government.

“If you don’t have a plan then the housebuilding process becomes appeal led.”

The local plan will be put to Bolton Council The local plan will be put to Bolton Council (Image: Newsquest)

He added: “Some of the things that inspectors will look at are, is the council delivering on its housebuilding targets and does it have an up-to-date plan?”

Earlier this year, Bolton Council had heard how its housebuilding target stood at more than 700 new homes annually but that this was expected to rise.

But proposals put out by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in August said that this could increase to more than 1,300 new homes a year. 

In March the council agreed to adopt Places for Everyone, a blueprint for development across Greater Manchester for the next 15 years.

In Bolton these meant removing 205 hectares of land from the green belt across three sites in the Bolton-Wigan Growth Corridor, while adding 8.3 hectares to it in Horwich. 

The local plan review will be designed to guide policies at a more detailed level and is expected to set out the approach to development and protection of sites across the borough.

The review is also expected to look at appropriate policies for certain strategic areas like Bolton town centre or other district centres and to consider changes in national planning policy.

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A Bolton Council document said: “At this stage, the full scope of a local plan review is yet to be established. 

“To an extent this will emerge as work is carried out looking at the evolution of national policy since Bolton’s older local plans were prepared, the implications arising from PfE, the publication of more recent Bolton and GM strategies. 

“Scope will also be informed through responses made to consultation during earlier stages of the local plan process which are more around exploring issues and options with a very wider range of stakeholders.”

The Bolton Local Plan Scheme and Local Plan Review is expected to go before a full meeting of the council on Wednesday November 27.