The first phase covered broad
outlines of infrastructure and environmental issues at a county level. The
second phase focuses on housing and employment issues at both a county and
community level. It sets guidelines for the future of towns and villages.
The council needs a core
strategy. Central Government’s National Planning framework encourages
development: broadly, the assumption is that development is permitted unless
planning authorities have reasons to say no. Officers and planning committees,
like the one I’m on, can decide to
reject applications for good local reasons but if those haven’t been previously
documented as policy there is a risk that the Planning Inspectorate, a remote
and deliberately unemotional group, will overrule a decision on appeal. Many of
the worst examples of development in the county arise from such decisions. The
core strategy will give such reasons by setting a framework for development in
the County. All that is a negative approach: the positive approach is that
development in the right place at the right time is good, and a considered
framework guides developers to do the “right thing”.
Northumberland, because of the
aftermath of the removal of the districts, does not have a recently prepared policy
framework and is at risk of developers and Inspectors therefore saying that it is
not relevant. Hence the core strategy now being prepared.
It is important that as many
people as possible read it and comment on it. It’s well laid out and relatively
easy to comment on line although you can also respond in writing. The starting
point of the document is here. Some specific
points about our area are here (Q39).
It’s also still possible to comment on
the first consultation – especially if there’s a connection to this one. For
example, I think the proposed number of houses in our area is not governed by
the number of people living here, it’s also related to the number of holiday
homes for letting. The policy on holiday lettings was discussed in the first exercise.
Responses should be in by 2
January; the plan is to publish a final draft of the whole strategy in Spring
in the hope it can be adopted in 2014. As well as the strategy, the Council is
consulting on the details of how it would be delivered – for example, the
phasings of housing numbers.
There’s a danger of consultation
overload. The AONB is also consulting on its management plan for the next five
years. It’s policies will have to be consistent with the core strategy and are
obviously important to the coastal economy. It has three themes: to conserve
and enhance the landscape; to promote a thriving and living landscape and to
encourage a place to celebrate and explore.
What does the core strategy say?
It wants to promote growth; it
sees population growth, and housebuilding, as a key part of this. In rural
areas, this is seen as a way of rebalancing the economy and the ageing
population. In the Belford/Seahouses area, it suggests 500 new homes over 20
years: this is based on previous trends – which have actually been much higher
– and the fact it’s an area where people want to come and live. It’s equal to
25 houses a year (as against 75 on average in the last five years) and assumes
a population growth of about 4%.
It has considered constraints
like landscape value and available land although I don't think it's thought about infrastructure enough. My main concern is that it doesn’t deal
with the problem of most new homes being used for holiday lets: allowing 500
new homes could therefore continue with the unbalancing of our area.
I think we should comment:
- the previous experience of
allowing houses without considering their end use has damaged the area*;
- the timing and scale of
expansion is important: gradual development of 25 houses a year is more
manageable than one development of 100.
- we need a better understanding
of the balance of available land use for industry, caravans, second/holiday
homes before being too explicit about housing numbers.
If you got to the end of this
post: well done. And please comment..
* I certainly don’t think holiday
homes are a bad thing: they help the economy. But as with most things it’s a
question of balance and scale.
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