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As part of our new Local Plan covering the next 15 years, we've put forward a proposed package of sites to accommodate 24,010 new residential homes and about 70 hectares of land for employment space.
This follows the government asking us to find 8,175 more homes than in the last version of our Local Plan.
These recommendations were approved by our Cabinet members on Wednesday (18 June).
The report set out a small number of potential additional allocations at Portishead, Weston-super-Mare, and the wider Weston area including Hutton and Locking.
There are also four strategic growth locations for new homes and employment at:
• Wolvershill, north of Banwell, with 3,300 dwellings
• South West Bristol (referred to as Woodspring), with a capacity of 3,730 new dwellings
• Nailsea and Backwell, with about 3,700 new dwellings
• Pill and Easton-in-Gordano, with 1,100 new dwellings across five new sites.
It's a delicate balancing act between making sure communities have enough good quality housing to meet local needs, while also making sure our beautiful countryside is protected.
Officers will now move forward in producing a full updated pre-submission (Regulation 19) Local Plan, which will be presented to Cabinet in September before being submitted to the planning inspectorate for independent examination.
Supporting infrastructure such as roads, employment, schools, medical facilities and public transport were also considered, though delivery on some of this depends on government funding.
Various rounds of consultation have been held since work began on the new North Somerset Local Plan in 2020. The latest was held earlier this year, from February to March.