Employment Land provision

Ensuring that a continuous and adequate supply of appropriate employment land is provided in the Region to support economic development has been identified as a key implementation priority for 2008/09.

The Assembly has clarified the way in which the employment policies should be used through statements that were submitted to the Wakefield Core Strategy Examination. These have been distributed to all Local Authorities. The statement on supply is available here. Advice on interpreting Table 11.3 in the RSS is available here.

Most Local Authorities have revised their Employment Land Reviews since the RSS was published. The Assembly and Yorkshire Forward have assisted in providing information to inform Employment Land Reviews.

The majority of local authorities have completed an Employment Land Review to inform policy development at local level but these need to be kept up to date to ensure planning for employment change and growth can be as effective as possible to achieve sustainable economic growth; this is particularly important given the current changing economic circumstances.

Rotherham, Donacaster, Ryedale, North Lincolnshire, Calderdale, Sheffield and Craven local authorities have told us that they are either in the process of updating their employment land reviews or intend to during 2009.

In general, the 5-year supply of employment sites has not been identified in Core Strategies and further work will be needed to ensure that this is undertaken during 2009.

A key difficulty experienced by many LPAs has been in the evaluation of the need to plan for "churn" and choice in the scale of provision of employment land. A project between the Assembly and Yorkshire Forward is being carried out to offer a regionally consistent perspective on this issue.

Yorkshire Forward and the Assembly are currently scoping out areas where the preparation of regionally specific guidance could assist local authorities in the preparation of Employment Land Reviews. The evidence supporting the Yorkshire and Humber Plan, which outlines a regional potential annual job growth of 29,160, dates from summer 2007 and was set against a very different economic landscape. Views are now being sought from authorities on those aspects of Employment Land Reviews, including the application of updated forecasts from the Regional Econometric Model, where additional information or guidance would be helpful.