Adoption Notice.
The Homes and Neighbourhoods – A Guide to Designing in Bradford was adopted by the Council as a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) on 4th February 2020.
It brings together the very latest thinking in housing and urban design and has been developed with a wide range of community and housing partners. It has also been shaped by comments received during the public consultation which took place between July and September 2019.
The guide seeks to deliver a step change in the quality of new housing in the District to create healthy, inclusive, sustainable and distinctive neighbourhoods for all. This includes making developments green, safe and well connected with places for children to play and streets designed to limit traffic speeds and give priority to pedestrians and cyclists. It also responds to the climate emergency by identifying low carbon development solutions for house builders to consider.
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Thank you to those who attended the various consultation events and submitted representations on the CSPR, which totaled over 3,900 during the consultation period. A full Statement of Consultation report will be published alongside the next stage of plan production.
Whilst there was support for many of the proposed changes to the Core Strategy, key issues raised included:
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Plan Period - wide range of comments over alternatives to the proposed plan period and base date.
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Climate Change - the Core Strategy should set a clearer path for achieving a substantial reduction in carbon use.
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Green Belt - comments were split between developers and site promoters seeking further Green Belt releases and strong community opposition to any change to the Green Belt.
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Employment & Jobs - there needs to be a clearer narrative between jobs forecasts and housing growth, with economic forecasts variously considered too low or over ambitious.
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Transport & Movement - more joined up thinking on growth, sustainability and climate change considerations; opposition to the South East Bradford Link Road and additional freight parking.
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Housing - significant split in opinion between those supportive of a reduction in housing numbers and others seeking an uplift in housing numbers to support growth and the delivery of non-brownfield sites. Wide range of technical issues raised in relation to phasing, evidence, accessibility and viability.
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Environment - overall support for the requirement of biodiversity net gain in development and generally positive feedback in relation to the proposed new healthy places policy.
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Holme Wood - a substantial number of comments (97% in petition form) against the proposed Holme Wood Sustainable Urban Extension within South East Bradford.
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Local Plan - Next stage public consultation.
The Local Plan Team has made strong progress on the development of the ‘preferred options’ for the Council’s Allocations Development Plan Document (DPD) as well as reviewing the consultation responses received to date.
The scale of the work involved, which includes preparing evidence updates, detailed site appraisals, and responding to the issues raised to the CSPR Preferred Options, means that public consultation is now programmed to start in June 2020.
The Council is intending to consult on both an update to the CSPR and Allocations DPD (Preferred Options) simultaneously in June. This will provide a clearer understanding of how updated strategic and key policies connect to allocations and preferred options for housing, employment and other uses.
 There are exciting times ahead for the Local Plan Team as we will be launching our new consultation portal in time for the major consultations coming later this year.
We are aware that the introduction of a new system can be very daunting; however Opus Consult will make the process a lot simpler and more efficient for users to find information and submit comments and for the Council to collect and summarise responses – particularly to site consultations. We will also publish a short ‘how to’ guide to assist users.
This system allows you to create and manage your own account with a password which is fully GDPR compliant. Once you submit any comments they are stored and you are able to see what has been submitted within your account settings. You can also view comments made by other people as the consultation progresses.
In order to save both time and costs we are encouraging as much comments to be submitted as possible through Opus Consult.
The Authority Monitoring Report (AMR) is the main mechanism for assessing the performance of the Development Plan and the timescales set out in the Local Development Scheme (LDS). Monitoring work feeds into the preparation of Local Plan documents and as such forms critical evidence for the emerging CSPR and the Allocations plan.
The AMR is currently being updated to cover the period 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2019 and will be published during March 2020.
Government has recently updated its annual measurement of housing delivery, known as the Housing Delivery Test, which shows an improvement in the level of housing delivery against housing need within the District, up from 4,037 dwellings (2015/16-2017/18) to 4,819 dwellings (2016/17-2018/19), or from 76% to 94%.
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Brownfield Land Update.
In December 2019 we published our third Brownfield Land Register update.
The register is a Government requirement. All Local Planning Authorities should annually publish and update a register of all brownfield land considered suitable, available and developable for residential use.
The purpose of the register is to promote land and buildings which have been previously used or developed as ‘development opportunities’ for new housing which will drive up the delivery of new homes and promote recycling of urban land.
Bradford’s Brownfield Register contains details of sites with existing but unimplemented planning permissions and other suitable land and buildings which the Council considers (subject to planning approval), would be suitable for residential use. Good progress continues to be made across the District in the re-use of land/buildings and the register has played a role in this. Key highlights:
- The first register published in 2017 contained 216 records. Whilst 137 of these remained 2 years later, 42 already have planning permission in place or are awaiting a decision on an application at the time of publication.
- The current register contains 211 records, 45 of which are new entries, more than half of these have planning permission.
The register is likely to include additional sites as identified through the Local Plan site allocations process and some sites may also be withdrawn as circumstances change. The next update to the register will be available in December 2020.
Neighbourhood Planning Update.
Within the Bradford District there are 12 designated Neighbourhood Areas producing Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDP). Here are the key plan updates:
Addingham
The Parish of Addingham voted 93.01% in favour of the Addingham Neighbourhood Development Plan at a referendum held on Thursday 28th November 2019.
As a result of the overwhelming support for the Neighbourhood Development Plan it now forms part of the overall Development Plan for the District and will be used to help determine planning applications within the Addingham neighbourhood area.
The adopted Addingham Neighbourhood Development Plan can be viewed on our website here (Addingham NDP) and also via Addingham Parish Council’s website.
Upcoming Examinations
There are two further Neighbourhood Plans which will be submitted by the Council for independent examination in the first half of this year:
- Steeton-with-Eastburn & Silsden; and
- Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury.
We will provide regular updates on the relevant neighbourhood area web page and in the next edition of Plan-it.
Evidence Base Update.
Open Space Assessment
The Council recently carried out a survey with local residents and user groups of open spaces across the District. The survey asked people which types of open spaces (parks, play areas, amenity spaces) they used, why they used them and what they thought of the quality of the provision. It also asked whether people considered there was enough open space in their local area and how they travelled to open spaces.
We would like to thank all those who took the time to participate in the survey.
We had an excellent response, receiving a total of 2,372 completed surveys. 1,448 of these were received through the online questionnaire and 924 were completed on-site at one of the parks or open spaces that were chosen to be surveyed.
This positive response highlights people’s interest in, and the value they place on, open space across the district.
The findings from the survey will be used to help identify the needs and demands for open space in the district, which in turn will support the designation of open space sites in the Allocations DPD. The information will also be used to help set standards for the provision of open space in new developments. The full report will be made available for comment as part of the Local Plan consultation in June.
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