Core Strategy Green Belt Review

Tamworth Local Plan Review: Green Belt Appraisal 2012 Lichfield District Council May 2012 Tamworth Local Plan Green Belt Appraisal 2012 Introduction: The purpose and scope of the Green Belt Appraisal: 1. Tamworth Borough Council is preparing a Local Plan for the Borough, which it proposes to publish in summer 2012. On Adoption, the Local Plan will replace the current Local Plan, which was adopted by the Council in 2006. The 2006 Local Plan defines the current Green Belt boundaries within Tamworth. The part of the Borough that lies to the south of the built- up area of the town lies within the Green Belt. This encompasses the open land that adjoins the Dosthill, Wilnecote and Hockley areas. 2. An Appraisal of the Green Belt within Tamworth Borough is needed as evidence to support the policies and proposals to be contained in the Local Plan. This is in order to show that the presence of statutory Green Belt within the Borough has been properly taken into account in the preparation of the Plan and that the Green Belt boundaries have been critically assessed to ensure that they are appropriate to fulfil their purpose during the Plan period and beyond. The new Local Plan will cover the period up to 2028. Tamworth Borough Council has commissioned Lichfield District Council to prepare a Green Belt Appraisal Report to provide an independent assessment of the Green Belt within Tamworth Borough, so that the Report can be submitted as part of the Evidence Base for the Local Plan review. It is for the Borough Council to consider the recommendations made within the Report in the context of the Local Plan as a whole. The Changing National Planning Policy Context 3. The review of the Local Plan is being prepared at a time when the Government has recently made changes to the national policy guidance that provides a new policy ‘framework’ at national level to underpin the preparation of the Plan. It is replacing a planning system that includes a raft of national Planning Policy Statements, Regional Spatial Strategies, County level Structure Plans and Local Plans, with a simplified system to include a national policy statement and Local Plans. 4. For Tamworth, the statutory Development Plan currently includes the West Midlands Regional Spatial Strategy and the Staffordshire Structure Plan (as well as the Adopted Local Plan). Both of these broader documents define the general extent of the Green Belt. The Government, however, is partly through the statutory processes of abandoning Regional Spatial Strategies and the Staffordshire Structure Plan. The Localism Act provides the powers to abandon Regional Spatial Strategies, whilst the Structure Plan policies have a limited time period, of around a year, before they are no longer ‘saved’ policies within the Development Plan. It is most important therefore, because of the increased reliance on Local Plans 2 within the national planning policy system, that Local Plans are revised to meet the needs of the future. This process needs to ensure that the Green Belt boundaries are appropriate as part of the overall planning strategy for the Borough. 5. In March 2012 the Government replaced a series of former Planning Policy Statements and Planning Policy Guidance Notes with a single document, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which will be the key national document that guides the preparation of Local Plans. 6. The NPPF provides national policy that should be followed in the preparation of Local Plans. It includes policies to achieve sustainable development that Local Plans should conform with, but also sets out some guidance about the evidence that should be collected to support policies and proposals of the plan. In essence the policies and proposals of a Local Plan need to be supported by appropriate evidence of their need. 7. The NPPF states that the Government is committed to maintaining the Green Belts that surround many of the larger urban areas across England and that it attaches great importance to them. It says that when preparing Local Plans authorities should consider the Green Belt boundaries and this Green Belt appraisal has been prepared to fulfil that requirement. A Local Plan is the appropriate place to consider whether an existing Green Belt, such as that established within Tamworth, should be altered. It is also the appropriate time to consider whether the Green Belt boundaries have the necessary degree of permanence, in the light of identified and potential future development requirements, to be capable of enduring beyond the Plan period. This Appraisal therefore considers whether the existing Green Belt boundaries are appropriate and examines the issue of their permanence. 8. Within that part of the NPPF that deals with Green Belt policy, the Framework outlines the purposes of the Green Belt. It also includes policy statements on land uses that are appropriate within Green Belts and a ‘checklist’ of considerations that should be taken into account when Green Belt boundaries are defined. These provide a succinct national policy context for the Green Belt Appraisal. An important aspect of the Green Belt statement within the NPPF is that it states that where Green Belt boundaries are already established, as is the case within Tamworth, they should only be altered in exceptional circumstances, through the preparation or review of the Local Plan. The question of whether there are any ‘exceptional circumstances’ that justify changes to the existing Green Belt boundaries therefore provides a particular focus for this Appraisal. 9. Taking account of the overall context, in terms of the current boundaries and the requirements for considering Green Belts through Local Plans, the body of the Appraisal is set out in four sections. These are: a brief resume of the history and context of the Tamworth Green Belt as part of the West Midlands Green Belt; consideration of the strategic role of Green Belt in relation to Tamworth; examination of the detailed Green Belt boundaries; 3 the issue of ensuring there are Green Belt boundaries capable of enduring beyond the Local Plan time period. The History and Context of the Tamworth Green Belt 10. It is useful to briefly outline the history of Green Belt policy within the West Midlands and in particular within Tamworth, to provide an understanding of the context of the current Appraisal. 11. A Green Belt was first proposed in the West Midlands during the 1950’s, principally as a means of preventing, through planning policy, the continuing outward expansion of the built up area of the West Midlands towns and cities into open countryside and in particular towards the series of freestanding towns and villages surrounding the main West Midlands conurbation. Within the Green Belt new built development would be severely restricted, largely to those needed in association with rural uses. In addition, the scale of buildings permitted as appropriate to those uses, would be minimised. 12. Draft Green Belt boundaries were initially identified in the 1960’s and particularly relevant to Tamworth, they included a Green Belt of some 5 to 6 miles in width between the edges of Birmingham/Sutton Coldfield and the towns of Rugeley, Lichfield, Tamworth and Nuneaton. These towns lay at the outer edge of the Green Belt. This meant that most of the Green Belt area between Birmingham and Tamworth lay within the largely rural local authorities of North Warwickshire Borough and Lichfield District, as shown on the context Plan 1. This illustrates the current extent of the Green Belt and shows that the green Belt south of Tamworth lies within North Warwickshire and to the west of Dosthill it lies within Lichfield District. Tamworth Borough, with very little rural land to the west and south of the built up area, therefore has a relatively small proportion the ‘sub- regional’ Green Belt area within its own boundaries. 13. The proposal to establish the Green Belt and to define its detailed boundaries took many years to be formally approved through the preparation of Local Plans. Within Staffordshire this was a gradual process. This included publication of draft proposals within the Staffordshire County Development Plan in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, and then included an amendment to the Staffordshire Development Plan in 1975 that defined a boundary within Tamworth. The Secretary of State approved proposals for the West Midlands Green Belt in 1975, which included the boundaries defined within the County Development Plan amendment. The approved Green Belt included the open countryside areas of Dosthill, Wilnecote and Hockley, but the boundary took account of proposals to develop the area south of Hedging Lane and to the east of Dosthill High Street, principally for housing. Whilst the then Reliant works was excluded from the Green Belt, the area surrounding Dosthill Hall was included within Green Belt. 4 Plan 1: Tamworth Green Belt Context 14. For the 1975 County Development Plan amendment, Staffordshire County Council prepared a number of ‘Insets’ within the Green Belt. The ‘Insets’ showed in more detail boundaries around some towns and villages, including Fazeley, where all of the area between Fazeley and Two Gates, both north and south of the former A5, was included in the Green Belt. 15. During the late 1970’s, most local planning authorities, which had been given planning powers through a reorganisation of Local Government in 1974, embarked on preparing Local Plans for their areas. For Tamworth its first Local Plan, prepared in the 1980’s amended the Green Belt boundary to the west of Dosthill to allow for the development of additional housing in the Blackwood Road area, so that the Green Belt boundary was re-drawn along the north side of Dosthill Hall. 16. The amended boundary of the Green Belt, established in detail by the first Tamworth Local Plan, has been carried through the subsequent reviews of the Local Plan so that it is incorporated into the adopted 2006 Local Plan.

Load more