🗺 What are we trying to do?

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We want planning decisions to pass a new test: does this development protect or harm the community’s long-term resilience and sovereignty? This means considering not just houses, but whether infrastructure, services, and social cohesion are keeping pace.

🎯 What will this achieve?

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• Stops approvals that undermine local capacity or control
• Requires national and local planners to assess long-term consequences
• Encourages joined-up planning that supports sustainable, self-reliant communities

🏩 NATIONAL LEVEL – What should our MP do?

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✅ 1. Propose a national planning test

Push for an amendment to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to introduce a “Resilience & Sovereignty Test” for developments that asks:

• Will this create excessive infrastructure or service pressure?
• Will it support or undermine local self-sufficiency?
• Is the community resilient enough to absorb it?

✅ 2. Lobby for joined-up assessments

Ask DLUHC and DEFRA to issue joint guidance that:

• Combines housing, health, climate, food, and infrastructure metrics
• Requires developers to show resilience benefits, not just housing numbers

✅ 3. Call for a Commons briefing or select committee review

• Raise awareness of recent planning failures that eroded resilience and control in local communities
• Demand a systematic response

🏡 LOCAL LEVEL (EHDC) – What can be done right now?

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✅ 1. Apply the test in planning reports

Planning officers should comment on how each application affects community resilience, infrastructure balance, and capacity.

✅ 2. Introduce local policy wording

Use the Local Plan and Design Codes to insert principles like:

• Social cohesion
• Infrastructure balance
• Environmental and food system resilience

✅ 3. Refuse or amend risky applications

Where a development would breach the resilience of local schools, GP surgeries, water systems, or community fabric, refuse or negotiate terms.

🤝 What should our MP do locally?

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• Back EHDC in applying a resilience test
• Promote EHDC’s approach as a pilot for national reform
• Include local data in national debates on resilience and planning