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Placemaking & Communities

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Placemaking & Communities

We propose the following draft objective for the Spatial Development Strategy to achieve and deliver.

Strategic Objective 4: Creating high quality buildings and places that allow our communities to flourish

This will be achieved by:

  • Facilitating the provision of the right homes to accommodate our needs, creating new and revitalised communities.
  • Ensuring high design standards to deliver beautiful buildings and places that are future ready, safe, sustainable, energy efficient and enable healthier and happier lives.
  • Positively shaping development so that it responds to and respects the City Region’s unique characteristics, creating high quality and attractive places where people want to live, work, visit and meet.
  • Protecting and utilising our built heritage and cultural assets for the benefit of current and future generations.
  • What you told us

    From our initial engagement, your feedback, in summary, told us:

  • Ensuring that design standards promote for accessible and inclusive design for all.
  • The role of the SDS establishing and meeting housing need for the City Region.
  • How the SDS should consider development viability.
  • What is considered to be the poor-quality design of developments.
  • Improving energy efficiency of housing stock and the accessibility of homes.
  • The link between economic growth and the number of houses required in the City Region.
  • Increasing tree-planting.
  • Improving health and wellbeing outcomes related to poor quality housing.
  • The lack of affordable and safe housing, and housing not meeting current and future needs of City Region residents.
  • Key reasons behind this objective

    The Metro Mayor and Combined Authority want to promote good design, support concerted action to improve the quality and attractiveness of neighbourhoods and devise a sub-regional spatial strategy to ensure new homes are built in the right places. He also plans for a fairer and greener housing market, the development of eco-friendly and energy efficient housing, to tackle homelessness and street sleeping working in partnership, and ensure everyone has access to a decent affordable home.

    The Metro Mayor has appointed Stirling Prize-winning architect Paul Monaghan as the City Region’s first design champion to promote good design.

    LCRCA’s Housing Statement sets out that we want to ensure that the quality of new housing is of a high standard, well designed, accessible, thermally efficient, technologically linked and future proof. It also sets priorities that relate to delivering more homes and improving choice and quality, supporting our ageing population, regenerating our neighbourhoods, improving rental quality, and tackling homelessness.

    National planning policy recognises that good design is a key aspect of sustainable development that creates better places to live and work, the importance of safe, inclusive and accessible development which promote health and well-being, and need to conserve and enhance the historic environment.

    National planning policy also sets out that plans should as a minimum provide for objectively assessed needs for housing, meet the needs of different groups in the community, set an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and quality of development, and make sufficient provision for housing and affordable housing and community facilities, such as cultural infrastructure.

    The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission have set out that beauty must become the natural result of working within the planning system, which to achieve requires three aims; ask for beauty, refuse ugliness, and promote stewardship.

    How we will use this objective

    This objective will serve as a guiding principle to shape the SDS as it is developed. A number of suggested policy approaches have also been put forward as part of this engagement that would directly or indirectly help us achieve this objective.

    Tell us what you think

    Please provide your views on this draft objective by answering the questions below.

    This engagement phase has finished

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