EAST Hampshire District Council is to hold a formal consultation on its new ‘Green Print’ for sustainable housebuilding and its long-delayed Local Plan later this year.

The Green Print policy will see developers made to build homes as environmentally friendly and energy efficient as possible.

It will be included in the new Local Plan setting out how East Hampshire is to meet government housing targets up to 2036. But the council has struggled to complete the document – work on it started in 2018 and it should have been approved at least 18 months ago.

Now the council has updated the timetable associated with producing it.

The next stage of formal consultation, when the public and stakeholders will be asked for views on the plan, will take place this November.

The Draft Local Plan, along with any representations, will then be submitted to a government inspector for examination in spring 2023.

The government expects 600 homes a year to be built in East Hampshire during the lifetime of the plan. But with 57 per cent of the district inside the South Downs National Park, almost all that development is set to go in the remaining 43 per cent of the district.