- National consultation on changes to NPPF
- Local Plan timetable update
- Local Plan evidence work update
- Neighbourhood Plans update
- Bradford Design Code - Pathfinder Programme
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Landscape Character Assessments and Supplementary Planning Document
New Assistant Director of Planning, Transportation and Highways
In February we welcomed Richard Hollinson to Team Bradford as the new Assistant Director of Planning, Transportation and Highways, replacing Julian Jackson.
Richard joins us from Kirklees Council where he was Head of Major Projects and Chief Highway Officer delivering their transportation programmes.
We hope you join us in welcoming Richard to Bradford.
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The Council’s Planning Department have been reflecting on the Government's consultation on proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) along with wider reform to the planning system and have submitted comments to the Government.
The Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities launched a consultation in December on the proposed approach to changing the NPPF, the approach to preparing National Development Management policies, how policies could support ‘levelling up’ and how national planning policy is currently accessed by users.
The key elements of the consultation included:
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proposing specific changes that the Government want to bring in in Spring 2023. These focus on housing and onshore wind in particular.
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Seeking views on a wider range of proposals for reforms to the system. Further consultation will be expected once the Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill (LURB) gains Royal Assent.
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Setting out the role for National Development Management Plan policies.
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Setting a timeline for transitioning to the new system of plan making.
The consultation reinforces the importance of an up to date plan and encourages Councils to continue working to put in place their local plans. To this end the Council will have regard to the final changes when published later this year but will continue to work forward with its new local plan- see our update below.
If you wish to find out more about this consultation, please visit the Government's Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill consultation website. Please note that this consultation has now ended.
Since the last newsletter the Local Plan Team have continued to work with a range of consultants to line up the evidence to support the Local Plan and its policies.
While significant progress has been made on key elements of the evidence work, the progress towards the Regulation 19 version of the plan is taking longer than anticipated. This is due to a number of factors – the main one being the scale and complexity of the critical evidence required to support the next version of the plan to ensure a robust plan. Most of this work is in train but will take some time to report and feed into the document.
We are looking to complete the majority of the technical evidence based work within the coming months so that we can move onto final plan drafting, testing of the plan via critical appraisals (Sustainability and Habitat), and consideration of the draft Regulation 19 Plan by members immediately thereafter.
We are aware that the slippage to the Local Plan timetable has prompted queries from our customers wanting to know when the next consultation stage will be. The programme is currently being updated and is aiming towards taking a revised Local Plan to Council later this year, followed by publication for formal comments with submission to Government later next year. A formal update will be made with clearer timescales following in autumn.
Local Plan Evidence Update
We are continuing to progress work updating the emerging Local Plan evidence base which will help inform the site assessments for housing and employment allocations, as well as new planning policies. This work includes:
Ecology - Consultants Footprint Ecology will be starting work on the revised Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) of the Local Plan in the coming months.
Heritage - officers in the Conservation Team have been preparing heritage impact assessments for a number of the proposed housing and employment allocations. These assessments consider the likely impacts of development on relevant heritage assets and provide suggested mitigation where appropriate.
Flood risk - the Council are continuing to work with consultants JBA to prepare a new and up-to-date Level 1 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment (SFRA), based on new river modelling work that has been provided by the Environment Agency. This will identify the areas at risk of flooding and help the council to apply the sequential approach to new development. Consultants will also be carrying out a more detailed Level 2 SFRA for specific sites which have some level of flood risk and provide suggested mitigation where appropriate.
Employment - consultants Edge Economics have been commissioned to produce an update to the Employment Land Review (ELR). This work will help to establish the levels of economic growth to be taken forward in the Local Plan, specifically set out the levels of job growth in the district over the plan period and the amount of employment land the Council will need to allocate to facilitate economic growth.
Housing - updates to the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan (HDTAP) have been completed and are available on the website.
The Council have commissioned Arc4 and Edge Analytics to prepare a Local Housing Need Assessment and Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). These important areas of evidence will inform the Council of the scale of need for homes over the period covered by the plan and the nature, type and mix of homes which should be provided given the current and projected future make-up of the district’s population.
Land - The brownfield land register has been updated and is available on the website.
Retail and Centres - Comprehensive surveys of all of the District’s retail centres were carried out between June and August 2022. Officers are now analysing the changes identified in retail compositions across all the city, town, district and local centres. The findings will feed into an up-to date retail health check assessment of centres and also inform a review of existing centre boundaries to ensure that they are appropriate and reflect the changing uses within the centres, which will be taken forward as part of the preparation of the Local Plan.
Transport - transport consultants AECOM are working with the Council and stakeholders on the production of local plan evidence work on transport. This is a major area of work covering the District and evaluating the implications of emerging site allocations in terms of traffic and movement, air quality, and carbon impact, and site access and highway safety.
Viability - specialist property regeneration consultants Aspinall Verdi have produced a draft report that will form the basis of viability and delivery evidence for testing the Local Plans emerging planning policies and site allocations.
In addition to the above, further work is being progressed or procured relating to the sustainability appraisal, area based masterplanning and design frameworks for key sites.
Since the last newsletter, significant progress has been made with neighbourhood plans in a number of communities, specifically:
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Ilkley and Oxenhope neighbourhood plans have successfully passed through local referendum and now form part of the planning framework for Bradford;
- The Harden Neighbourhood Plan has passed through the examination stage and the Council’s Executive has approved the Plan to progress to local referendum on Thursday 27th July 2023;
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Wilsden Parish Council have recently consulted on their Regulation 14 plan; and
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Keighley Town Council received Neighbourhood Area status in December allowing them to produce a neighbourhood plan for their parish area.
The tables below provide an overview of the various stages of progress of local councils.
List of the Made Neighbourhood Plans within the Bradford District
 The updated Neighbourhood Planning Status Map can be viewed by clicking here.
For further information about Neighbourhood Planning or any of the Neighbourhood Plans listed above, please visit the Neighbourhood Planning webpages.
The government have recently introduced design codes as a key element of the new planning system and every local authority will have to produce one. Design Codes are a set of requirements (or rules) for new development. It is hoped they will help to speed up the planning process and lead to better quality places which are supported by local people.
Bradford is one of 25 places in the country that has been selected to pilot this new approach as part of the government’s Design Code Pathfinder programme. Bradford Council has developed a draft design code for new homes and streets which tests how such an approach may work in practice.
The code will support the Bradford Local Plan, in particular the need for approximately 30,000 new homes to be built in the district by the year 2040. It is hoped that the design code will help to ensure this housing growth is positive and delivers the sorts of places which Bradford needs, contributing to the regeneration of deprived urban neighbourhoods and bringing about improvements in health and well-being, air quality, safety and sustainability.
The design code will build on existing work in the District, such as the principles set out in our Homes and Neighbourhoods Design Guide (2020), as well as emerging agendas such as ‘Clean Growth’ and becoming a Child Friendly District, translating them into precise, mandatory code requirements – codes should be very clear and capable of a quick 'Yes' or 'No' answer.
The draft version of the code has been informed by input from local people, groups and organisations in the district including via an online survey held in November 2022 and community conversations/workshops in January 2023.
The top three priorities which people identified in the survey for new development in Bradford were:
- ‘Energy efficiency in homes’ (59% of respondents),
- ‘Green streets’ (31%)
- ‘Providing enough parking’ (26%) and that ‘development responds to local character’ (25%).
Additional themes identified through the conversations/workshops include focusing on good quality decent homes that cost less to run, providing well-designed storage (e.g. for bins, bikes and other equipment), the importance of space to play indoors, finding the balance between providing enough parking space and creating attractive people-focused neighbourhoods, providing well-connected streets that are safe for walking, cycling, socialising and play, planting on streets (to provide space for rainwater drainage, shading/shelter, and habitats for wildlife), 20mph streets, and low emission development to ensure good air quality.
Further information about the design code and the engagement undertaken to date can be found here Bradford Design Code. We are currently reviewing the draft Design Code and in what form it takes going forward and how it relates to the emerging Local Plan.
The Local Plan Team, together with colleagues from the Landscape, Design and Conservation Team have been working alongside consultants LUC (Land Use Consultants) to prepare a new and up-to-date Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) for the district.
The new Landscape Character Assessment has been prepared in line with the latest Natural England guidance and other best practice from across the country. The work has involved reviewing the existing LCA, putting forward a new set of character types and areas, providing updated descriptions for these - taking account of the changes in the landscape over the last 20 years, and providing some guidance for how new developments should response to, and fit into the landscape.
We have engaged with a number of environmental organisations, neighbouring local authorities, and parish, town and village councils as part of this work and will be consulting more widely later this year. The new LCA will provide the key evidence to be used to help formulate the landscape policy in the new Local Plan.
Revised Supplementary Planning Document (SPD)
Similarly to the existing Landscape Character Assessment, the new LCA will be converted into a Supplementary Planning Document later this year. At this stage we will be consulting with communities and other interested organisations on the findings from the LCA – so please look out for this consultation.
Landscape Sensitivity Assessment
The consultants have also carried out a Landscape Sensitivity Assessment (LSA) for a number of the sites being considered as part of the Local Plan. This work forms part of the enhanced site assessments that the council is carrying out to ensure that the sites selected as new housing and employment allocations represent the most sustainable options. The work will identify if any of the proposed sites will have potential adverse impacts on the landscape and will put forward suggested mitigation to reduce any such effects.
The LSA assesses each site against the following eight criteria: physical and natural character; cultural and historic character and associations; settlement form and edge; settlement setting; access and recreation; views; and perceptual qualities. A sensitivity score is given for each criteria, and the site is also given an overall sensitivity rating ranging from low to high. These findings, along with information on other constraints will help officers to make balanced decisions on the sites to be allocated in the Local Plan. More information on the site sensitivity work will be presented as part of the evidence base at the next consultation stage of the Local Plan.
Further details of this work will be published on our webpages shortly.
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