Redcar and Cleveland Local Development Framework - Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council

17-Jun-10

Spatial Strategies Award Commendation 2007

Sponsored by Planning Officers Society

Summary

Redcar and Cleveland is a small unitary authority of great contrast and with widespread regeneration needs. The Local Development Framework has been used as fundamental tool to raise the stakes for Redcar and reinvigorating local expectations.

Background

Redcar and Cleveland is a small unitary authority, pop 140,000, in the North East of England. It includes the eastern part of the Middlesborough conurbation, the South Tees industrial area, which contains Teesport steel and chemical complexes, the main town of Redcar, the rural parts of East Cleveland with former ironstone mining communities and attractive seaside resorts, and the historic market town of Guisborough. It is therefore an area of great contrasts and experiencing considerable regeneration challenges. These include responding to areas of industrial decline with contaminated land, pockets of abandoned housing and communities experiencing multiple deprivations. For too long the area had suffered from a poor environment and poorly designed development. The area therefore suffered from a poor image and has had difficulty attracting the right quality of inward investment.

Project Description

The Local Development Framework was seen as a fundamental and integral part of the process of raising the stakes for Redcar, raising the standards for new development and generally reinvigorating local expectations.

With the local plan needing to be reviewed, the appointment of staff new to the authority helped in the decision to totally supersede the old plan with a suite of new documents. This was a bold decision for a small authority with limited resources in the absence of national guidance on how to proceed to meet Government expectations of what the new system would deliver. Seven development plan documents (SPD’s) were decided upon as the local development scheme, each with a realistic target for delivery. These DPDs comprise a Core Strategy, Development Policies, Communities, Proposals Map, Economic policy, and a joint authority Waste and Minerals Core Policy and proposals. These documents are supplemented by a design Supplementary Planning Document and area spatial strategy Supplementary Planning Documents. Sustainability appraisals also form part of the suite of documents, as required by legislation. The team wanted clear, robust, flexible and locally distinctive documents that were easy to understand and free from jargon, and were visionary yet very capable of implementation.

The first two documents comprising the LDS, the Core Strategy and the Development Policies DPDs have been subject to Examination in Public. A member of the LSP described the documents as saying ‘twice as much in half the space in an easily understandable way.’ The Inspector’s reports on the 2 DPDs, issued in May 2007,found both to be sound, needing only minor changes and commenting on how well they accorded with PPS3 which was published, in its final form, less than 2 months prior to the opening of the EIP. No mean feat for the policy team to keep their documents up to date with emerging policy.

Planning Achievement

The wholehearted endorsement of the approach and the policies is already reaping benefits, giving certainty to development proposals, providing a co-ordinating framework for the partners in the LSP, and enabling insistence on high quality design and adherence to sustainable development principles and policies;
It was important to raise the profile of the planning function within the Council and with local people and organisations. This was done by:
• developing strong links with the Local Strategic Partnership to understand their work and aspirations and for them to understand the role of the LDF and how important their contribution and commitment was,
• developing imaginative, memorable and fun consultation events, training staff in consultation techniques and project management,
• securing the continued active engagement of key department heads and Councillors,
• working closely with the Government Office, the regional assembly and Regional Development Agency and adjoining authorities;
As one of the first LDFs to go through the system with endorsement of its Core Strategy, Redcar’s achievements have been recognised by the profession, by being part of the Planning Officers Society High Speed Group and Spatial Plans in Practice Project, giving feedback to PINS on their experiences of the EIP and lecturing at Planning Schools. Calls for assistance from other local authorities are readily responded to;
Redcar and Cleveland have demonstrated that when a place is clear about what it wants to achieve and when the vision and resultant policies and implementation proposals are succinctly presented and jargon free then the LDF schema is very fit for purpose and can be managed with relatively limited staff resources. Redcar and Cleveland have demonstrated how the flexibility of the system can be used to respond to local circumstances over a time frame that suits local needs and resource constraints. They were sufficiently confident on what their outcomes should be not to have to wait for detailed guidance before taking the plunge.

Key Participants

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council