Development Strategy

The council has started the second phase of consultation on its core strategy: the core strategy sets out the vision for how the county will develop over the next 20 years.

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.