The Inspector said in his letter (3-page / 48KB PDF) to the Council that there would be "little point" in continuing the examination until the Council has had an opportunity to address the soundness issues.
The Inspector said that the strategy "does not demonstrate an adequate and realistically deliverable supply of housing land". The strategy proposes an annual provision of at least 1,300 homes. However, the district's Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) (211-page / 4.77MB PDF) sets out an annual rate of housing provision for Salford of at least 1,600 dwellings.
The Inspector said that the provisions for housing land supply were too uncertain and that the strategy's estimated net loss of around 55,000 square metres of industrial and warehouse floorspace during the plan period could therefore not be justified.
The Inspector called for identification of more opportunities for house building and asked the Council to give further consideration to the urban parts of the City. He said that this could be done without undermining the RSS which states that the priority for growth and development should be the regional centres of Manchester and Liverpool and that inner areas should be second priority.
The Council was also asked to reassess the strategy's policies on the size of dwellings, saying that the policies were "somewhat over-prescriptive at present" and that this may "thwart much needed housing development".
The Council wrote (4-page / 1.25MB PDF) to the Inspector in July saying that the identified housing supply figures were "still high" and that they had been arrived at "despite significant objections from some residents and community groups" who had suggested lower housing figures.
The Inspector said that it was with "considerable reluctance" that he was suspending the examination, but that he could not guarantee that the submitted plan could be modified to overcome the identified matters making it unsound.
