New planning guidelines should make it easier for local residents on Gwynedd and Anglesey to build affordable homes in their own communities.

That’s the view of councillors who approved a document that will take effect across both counties when considering planning applications.

Councillors had sought more clarification on what constituted a “local person” following a family’s successful plea to  build an affordable home on the island.

In December, Anglesey Planning Committee members approved the outline plan to build the dwelling at Cefn Trefor in Trefor despite warnings that allowing it would be contrary to the Joint Local Development Plan (JLDP).

As a result, committee members were asked to define the term ‘Local Need’ when it comes to future planning applications with the couple having lived “all their lives” in the same council ward, now living three miles away from the proposed site.

But the policy’s definition of ‘local’ was more constrained than simply living in the same electoral ward, with officers of the view that the application did not meet all the necessary criteria.

The policy in place at the time stated that only ‘local need’ affordable housing should be provided in ‘cluster’ communities such as Trefor, with the wording that  only those “resident within the cluster or in the surrounding rural area for a continuous period of five years or more” should be eligible.

But after being unable to agree on a definition of “local”, members voted to send the item to be discussed by a future meeting of Anglesey and Gwynedd’s Joint Local Development Plan Committee for further deliberation.

The committee unanimously approved the clearer guidelines that state the definition of ‘surrounding rural area’ for applications within local, coastal or rural villages or a clusters as being a distance of ‘6km from the site of the application’.

Committee member Cllr Ken Hughes told last week’s meeting in Llangefni: “I’m pleased that you’ve given fair consideration to the meaning of ‘local’.

“It’s fair to say that I felt previously that we were held hostage and the previous guidelines actually stopped rather than encouraged local people to build affordable homes.”

With the statutory consultation now having been completed, the new guidelines have now been formally adopted.

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