On Monday, we had excellent news that an independent Planning Inspector had ruled that Swindon’s Local Plan was sound.

This might seem like an obscure local government document, but it is actually a vital tool to help us deliver homes and infrastructure such as new roads and schools.

To set the context, one of the key challenges that Swindon has faced since the 1950s is expansion. Alongside this, other factors such as good transport links and the ease with which you can reach so much of the rest of Britain has made the borough a good place for business, which in turn brings demand for new houses.

We can no longer rely on our current Local Plan that the Council adopted back in 2006 to control housing development. It is out of date. Already there are developers, particularly to the West of Swindon, who are looking at opportunities that may arise should neither Swindon nor Wiltshire have had a strategy adopted.

The Council could now respond in one of two ways. We could try to resist any further expansion because we have grown enough. However, all government policy since 1947 has supported growth and trying to use our planning powers to resist development would be expensive, futile, and costly. If you look at historical copies of this newspaper from the 1990s, you will see that the Council earned the nickname “the Borough of Thumbs Down” because of its negative attitude.

As an Administration, we rejected this short-sighted approach. Instead, we have chosen to manage growth so that it works best for the borough and provides new jobs as well as new homes. In order to do this, we need a Local Plan that will give us the ability to reject inappropriate new developments.

A Local Plan will also allow us to get money from developers for much-needed local infrastructure, through legal methods such as Section 106 money, or the new Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

Producing the plan was a huge task which included a three-week examination in public of all the proposals at Steam last spring. We have had to adjust the plan to take account of the current economic conditions as well as new government planning policies. Our planning team has coped with these challenges admirably.

I am pleased to say that Swindon is just one of five councils in the country to have an up-to-date Local Plan endorsed by the Planning Inspectorate. Our next task is to have the plan approved by all councillors and I hope that will happen before April. The new Local Plan is a good illustration of how the Council is taking a strategic, long-term approach to all the issues the Borough faces.