Northamptonshire’s Environmental Character and Green Infrastructure Suite - River Nene Regional Park Partnership

27-Jun-10

E-Government Award Winner 2007

Sponsored by Planning Portal

Summary

The Northamptonshire Environmental Character and Green Infrastructure (ECA and GI) suite provides a comprehensive, transparent and strategic tool usable by all those involved in planning and allowing them to take account of, enhance, and expand the county’s green infrastructure. The project took 5 years to develop, was launched in November 2006, and is a first in its field.

Background

Northamptonshire is at the heart of the Milton Keynes and South Midlands growth area, and is set to receive around 100,000 new homes by 2021. The challenge faced was how to deliver liveability for new and existing communities. Green infrastructure, a network of multifunctional green space, provides the opportunity to contribute to a high quality natural and built environment.

Project Description

ECA and GI suite and identifies opportunities and corridors for investment and how to make green space more accessible to local communities. These proposals include opportunities for new leisure, recreational and educational facilities as well as for green local business. The ECA also identifies those landscape and green infrastructure characteristics that are inalienable and should be conserved and enhanced.

In order to identify the locations and functions of appropriate green corridors, it was necessary to move away from the existing, somewhat crude subjective landscape designations and to adopt a landscape character based approach that was objective and detailed enough to feed into the planning processes at regional, sub-regional and local levels. Regional partners in local and central government, universities and the Regional Authority and Regional Development Agency, who all held largely independent data banks were brought together to form a partnership under the leadership of the River Nene Regional Park, to pool resources, verify information, and fill missing gaps to a common format using the latest technology.

A methodology was developed which led, via a series of interactive, hierarchical layers of combined information, to the definition of the environmental character of Northamptonshire. In all some 600-plus sources of information were combined which could deliver detailed information on individual aspects, ranging from field boundary definition to wildlife habitats and corridors, to multi layered assessments, such as landscape, biodiversity and historic landscapes. The information is linked to spatial planning policies and strategies at all levels. The data has been arranged to enable future scenario testing such as climate change variables, changing growth assumptions and changes to planning policies.

The green infrastructure aspect is created by combining information that forms the environmental character assessment with habitat corridors and a sustainable movement network, the latter linking settlements, leisure, recreational, cultural and natural amenities. The resultant green corridors can then define the capacity of environmental investment which assists in defining, for eg, recreational and leisure priorities, their size and impacts, and those areas which should remain as found. This rigorous assessment has been very useful in justifying grant applications for projects and in supporting planning applications.

Planning Achievement

This vast range of detailed information was made fully interactive and accessible on the web, with an introductory guide. It can be used by the development industry, environmentalists, special interest groups, and the general public, with the information able to be customised to meet all sorts of general and specialist needs. Much of the lower level information is freely available. Should more detail be required, the user is directed to the relevant agency where a licence fee is payable;
The establishment of the partnership as a community interest company has secured the future of the project, with a commitment to a five yearly review of data, policies and strategies. The method has used IT and techniques that are easily transferable or readily available at a very high value for money return. The partnership has actively sought to disseminate their approach and as a result has interested takers in other sub-regions of England, and has been included as a partner in a European initiative;
The vast range of users, uses and applications to which this suite can be applied at varying geographic levels, down to the site-specific, and intimately linked with the spatial planning system, is extremely impressive. Its future has been assured by the fact that it is has become indispensable to both its originators and users in an extremely cost effective way. It is simply the best around.

Key Participants

River Nene Regional Park, LDA Design, North Northamptonshire Joint Planning Unit, Northamptonshire County Council, RS Brayshaw ECS