The Joint Committee’s main role is to produce a Local Plan for South East Lincolnshire, which reflects the vision and aspirations of the local community, and deals effectively with the issues facing the area. The Local Plan must:
- identify those areas of land that will be need to be developed for housing, shops, or employment uses in order to meet the area’s needs up to 2036;
- identify those areas of land which must be protected from development – perhaps because of their historic or environmental importance;
- co-ordinate the provision of infrastructure and local facilities;
- decide the appropriate response to the big issues facing the area, e.g. flood risk; and
- set out policies against which planning applications can be judged.
The Local Plan will need to be reviewed periodically to keep it up-to-date, and greater clarity and detail on some of its provisions will be provided by the production of Supplementary Planning Documents.