New Core Development Strategy, good in parts.

I am writing this in East Sussex so will not be attending today’s Strategy Committee Meeting.

This is a pity because on the agenda is an item regarding the Draft of the Babergh Development Framework Core Strategy Document, which sets out the strategic parameters for planning in the District between now and 2031.

At present the committee is simply deciding whether the document is fit to go out to consultation.  However, having read it, I can see that the latest version varies quite considerably from the document that we looked at last year.

In theory at least we are no longer bound by ‘top down’ government set targets in respect of housing, and it is good to see that what is now being suggested is growth that is more or less in line with that  seen in the past ten years or so.  This seems much more sensible than some of the higher numbers suggested last time.

The distribution of housing growth has also altered.  Although ‘town edge’ sites, it is suggested,  should continue to take the largest part of development, there is less emphasis on making any village that happens to have facilities larger as a matter of course.  Instead a complex mapping exercise has been undertaken which shows which villages are used as service centres by others.  These are now called ‘core villages’, and others ‘hinterland villages’.  Under this new categorisation Great Waldingfield and Acton are no longer regarded as ‘core’, since although they do have some facilities (a shop, a school) they are not generally used as centres by people coming from elsewhere.

Our nearest core villages are Lavenham and Long Melford, and, as far as I understand it they will be subject to fewer restrictions on development.

Because development will be more widely spread around the villages than previously envisaged, Acton and Great Waldingfield could be asked to take rather less than under the previous plan, and Little Waldingfield a little more.  I hope that this outcome is at least in part due to the meeting held last year to discuss the last proposals, where residents expressed the view that future growth in the villages should be proportionate.

I am less happy with the high economic growth aspirations of the paper.  I do not believe that economic growth should be the primary driver for change, over and above social and environmental factors.  I would prefer to see all three given equal weight, particularly in what remains, by and large, a rural area, with low unemployment, served by two market towns.   Be ‘open for business’ by all means, but an all out dash for the provision of ‘local jobs’ over and above other considerations, and the infrastructure that this would imply, is more likely to impoverish the area than to improve it.

 
You will have the chance to comment on the plans.  Look out for notices of consultation