Consolidated Official Plan Review and Update
August 10, 2009 - The Draft Consolidated Official Plan was presented to Council and Council has authorized staff to circulate the Draft Official Plan document to agencies, stakeholders and interested parties for review and comment.
Council is currently reviewing East Gwillimbury's Official Plan to ensure sustainability as our community grows. The main purpose of the Official Plan Review is to provide a set of clear goals, polices and implementation mechanisms to manage growth and guide land use planning within the Town to the year 2031, and to address longer-term issues of growth management beyond the approximate twenty year planning horizon. The Town intends to consolidate and update the polices of the various community plans for identified growth areas into a single comprehensive policy document. The Official Plan Review will emphasize sustainable development, environmental design, employment land allocation and conform to the Greenbelt Plan and the Provincial “Places to Grow” Growth Plan. Through the Official Plan Review and Update the Town plans to accomplish a clear set of guidelines designed to be environmentally friendly, and create standardized polices and development phasing based on the principle that “growth pays for complete communities”.
Purpose
Council identified the need for the Official Plan Review based on the priorities established through the Town's 2005 Strategic Plan, the need to review the outdated policies associated with several community plans and the inconsistencies between policy documents for the Town's various growth areas. In addition, the Town recently undertook a review of the Town's potential for economic development and job creation within strategic employment corridors in the Town in partnership with the Region of York, which identified strong opportunities for additional employment development to ensure a balance for the Town's residential growth.
The need for an updated Official Plan is also driven by the changing policy landscape for growth and development due to a number of recent provincial initiatives. Additional external drivers for the Official Plan include the following:
-
conformity exercise associated with the Provincial "Greenbelt Plan"
-
conformity exercise mandated by the Provincial Growth Plan "Places to Grow"
-
establishment of the new Provincial Policy Statement
-
new Planning Act powers under Bill 51
-
Region of York Growth Management Work currently being undertaken to address the requirements of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe
Workshops
Staff Reports
Background Studies
The Town has already commenced significant growth management work, which is designed to be undertaken parallel to and inform the Official Plan review process. Such background studies include: