Foreword

Our Borough is a great place to live, work and visit, with strong, healthy, well served communities and a beautiful green environment to enjoy. We are keen to keep it that way and are preparing a new Local Plan to protect the essential qualities of the Borough while at the same time delivering the housing, jobs, open space and other infrastructure that will be required in future.

During July to September 2013, the Council carried out a consultation on the Local Plan 2015-2030 Preferred Options. The consultation ran for 10 weeks and generated an impressive 3,173 comments from 1,239 people.

We have listened carefully to your comments, and we want to ensure the aim to balance the need for growth with the desires of the communities of the Brentwood Borough remains at the heart of the Local Plan progress.

A lot has changed since 2013. It is clear that the requirement to provide for housing and job growth in the future has increased from previous years. For this reason we are reconsidering the key issues that come forward during the 2013 consultation. We want to positively plan for our Borough’s future, providing for needed development while retaining the quality of our natural environment. We recognise it will not be easy to reconcile conflicting views on where housing and other development should take place, and so we need your help to work through the issues together.