NEW: Potential development sites

Everyone can put forward sites in Breckland that might be suitable for future development. 

Any interested parties, including landowners and developers, can suggest sites that may be able to accommodate new homes or employment space in the future.

Following Breckland’s Call for Sites in 2022, over 500 individual sites were put forward. Many of these will not be suitable and the next step is for the Council to identify a fair way to assess which ones to short list. We would like to hear your views on a proposed new criteria for assessing potential development sites. 

The proposed criteria – or checklist for assessing sites – considers a number of aspects such as whether it is a ‘brownfield’ site i.e. previously developed land or ‘greenfield’; whether there is suitable access to roads, footpaths; the visual impact development might have on the landscape; as well as whether the site is immediately available. 

For each site, the Council proposes to indicate potential suitability against these considerations using a traffic light system (red = likely not suitable, amber = might be suitable and green = likely suitable).

Assessment work still to do

The site analysis published here is an initial high-level assessment for Phase 1 of multiple phases for site selection. This concludes with an assessment of the alignment of each site to the emerging development options. Further, more detailed, site assessments will be undertaken on a smaller range of sites that will include feedback from key consultees and stakeholders on the potential constraints, impacts and infrastructure requirements of sites. It will additionally be informed by spatial analysis of the key designations affecting suitability of sites including flood risk, biodiversity, accessibility and the historic environment.

UPDATE 6^th February 2024 - An interactive map of the sites submitted through the call for sites process is available from the Full list of sites page linked below. 

Find out more

Read the full Topic Paper: Site assessments Phase 1 Report. 

View the full list of sites considered against this proposed assessment criteria.