TENDRING DISTRICT COUNCIL LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK Planning Services Identifying Broad Areas for Potential Settlement Expansion October 2008 2 Contents 1 Introduction 4 2 The District Housing Requirement 5 3 Settlements Likely to Accommodate Housing Growth 6 4 Potential Levels of Housing Growth 7 5 General Principles for Identifying Land 9 6 Localised Material Considerations 11 7 Initial Sieving Exercise and Identification of Possible Growth 13 Areas 8 Discounting and Refinement of Potential Growth Areas 49 3 1. Introduction 1.1 As part of the Local Development Framework (LDF), the Council is required to produce a ‘Site Allocations/Delivery’ Development Plan Document (DPD) that will identify the specific parcels of land that will be developed for housing (and other uses) in the period 2011 to 2026 to meet the housing requirements for the district set out in the emerging East of England Plan. 1.2 The sites that will be allocated for housing will need to be able to deliver the required number of dwellings in accordance with the Council’s ‘Spatial Strategy’ contained within the LDF Core Strategy which will set out the broad distribution of growth throughout the district. 1.3 At the time of writing, the Council was yet to consult on options for the spatial strategy neither had it made any decisions on what the preferred strategy would be. However, whatever spatial strategy the Council chooses, it will have to demonstrate, through robust evidence, that sufficient sites could be made available within each of the sub-areas to deliver the number of homes required. 1.4 Key to this will be the ‘Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment’ (SHLAA) which is a requirement of Government planning policy contained in PPS3 – “Housing”. That assessment will look at the availability, suitability and deliverability of sites to inform the Council’s choice of housing allocations for the LDF and to help the annual monitoring of housing land supply. 1.5 From initial work that has been undertaken in preparing the emerging SHLAA and work on the recently adopted Local Plan (which expires in 2011), it is evident that the supply of previously developed land within the built-up area of the district’s towns and villages will not be sufficient to deliver the housing numbers required in the period 2011-2026. It is highly probable that a significant proportion of housing development will need to take place in the form of settlement expansion in selected locations, most of which is likely to be on greenfield land. 1.6 Until the Council agrees what the distribution of growth in Tendring will be through the LDF Core Strategy, it will not be possible to indicate exactly how much greenfield land will need to be released for housing in different parts of the district. However, to assess potential spatial strategy options, the Council must at least consider where, if greenfield development is required, the broad areas of potential growth might be located. This is supported in the Government’s Practice Guidance on SHLAA which recommends that Local Authorities do consider the potential of broad areas where there is expected to be pressure for growth. 1.7 This study is designed to identify broadly and sensibly, where there might be pressure for settlement expansion. This is so that any early technical assessments such as transport modelling, landscape impact assessment, sustainability appraisal and SHLAA assessment needed as evidence in support of the LDF Core Strategy and/or Allocations Document to be undertaken in an effective way avoiding unnecessary and potentially costly technical analysis of sites that are clearly unsuitable for settlement expansion. 4 2. The District Housing Requirement 2.1 The housing requirement for the Tendring District, as set out in the emerging East of England Plan (RSS14), is a minimum net dwelling stock increase of 8,500 dwellings in the period 2001-2021, i.e. 425 dwellings per annum. 2.2 To date (2008), the delivery of housing has been slightly above the 425 dwellings per annum requirement and it is expected that by 2011, the housing policies and allocations in the current 2007 Local Plan would have enabled the delivery of at least a significant proportion, if not all, the first ten years worth of housing required by the RSS. It is expected that the residual housing requirement for the period 2011-2021 will be in the region of 4,250 dwellings. Projecting 425 dwellings per year to 2026 i.e. the time horizon for the LDF, it is expected that the Council will need to plan for approximately 6,500 new homes in the period 2011-2026 (subject, naturally, to any review of the RSS in the meantime). 2.3 In recent years, the Council has been able to minimise the amount of greenfield land used for housing development; mainly thanks to a healthy supply of small infill sites within built up areas coming forward as windfalls and the redevelopment of vacant land and buildings identified in an Urban Capacity Study from 2001. However, in the 2007 Local Plan, the Council needed to concede one modest greenfield urban extension site (on the periphery of Clacton-on-Sea) to meet the district’s housing requirements to 2011, a sign that the supply of brownfield sites, even then, could only go so far. 2.4 With an additional 6,500 dwellings required, it is obvious that by 2011, brownfield sites within built-up areas will not be sufficient in number nor size to deliver this level of growth in the period 2026. Consequently, the Council will need to be prepared that significant releases of greenfield land will be required to deliver the required numbers. 5 3. Settlements Likely to Accommodate Housing Growth 3.1 The Tendring district contains a large number of settlements of varying size and character of which only a limited number, due to their range of existing services and facilities, might be expected to accommodate housing development. The Council’s technical documents entitled “Establishing a Settlement Hierarchy” and “Approach to Housing Development within the Settlement Hierarchy” look closely at the issue of which settlements, if required, could receive an allocation of housing. 3.2 Those studies looked at the range of existing services and facilities available, settlement size and national and regional planning policy (namely policies SS3 and SS4 of RSS14) to recommend that, within any ‘sub-area’ of the district (see technical document entitled “Defining District Sub-Areas”), depending on the broad distribution of growth proposed in the Core Strategy, the majority of housing development should be directed towards the following ‘Urban Settlements’: Clacton-on-Sea & Jaywick; Frinton, Walton & Kirby Cross; Harwich & Dovercourt; Lawford, Manningtree & Mistley; Brightlingsea; and The Colchester Fringe 3.3 It was also recommended that more limited housing development should also be planned for in and around the following ‘Key Rural Service Centres’ mainly for local needs: Little Clacton; St. Osyth; Thorpe-le-Soken; Alresford; Great Bentley; and Elmstead Market. 3.4 ‘Other Rural Settlements’ comprising those smaller rural villages with a more limited range of jobs, shops, services and facilities will only receive housing development in the form of infill development within sensibly defined settlement boundaries and affordable housing permitted through a rural exception policy. 6 4 Potential Levels of Housing Growth 4.1 How much housing each of the Urban Settlements and Key Rural Service Centres will be expected to accommodate depends entirely on what the Spatial Strategy for the district will look like. In anticipation of consultation on spatial options, this study can only make assumptions as to the maximum amount of development that any one settlement might be expected to accommodate in order to identify broad areas where that growth might sensibly take place. 4.2 In doing this, the Council has made the following crude assumptions based on initial preparation work undertaken on the technical document entitled “Spatial Strategy” and “Approach to Housing Development within the Settlement Hierarchy”. Whilst, at this stage, these assumptions are crude, it allows a flexible approach to identifying broad areas that can be refined once the district’s Spatial Strategy is clearer. The assumptions are: No single sub-area of the district will be expected to accommodate all of the district’s housing growth; No one sub-area of the district will be expected to accommodate more than 60% of the district’s housing growth (just under 4,000 dwellings); If a significant proportion of the growth (say 2,000 homes or more) is going to take place in any one sub-area, it can only take place in the sub-areas of Clacton, Harwich or West Tendring (which includes the Fringe of Colchester)*; The Frinton sub-area cannot be expected to accommodate any more than 30% of the growth (around 2000 dwellings). The sub-areas of Manningtree or Brightlingsea which contain much smaller urban areas, cannot be expected to accommodate larger proportions of growth than Clacton, Frinton or Harwich so a maximum of 1.000 dwellings (15% of growth) could be expected in each of these areas. Because the Mid-Tendring sub-area does not contain an Urban Settlement, it cannot be expected to accommodate a significant proportion of the required housing; Key Rural Service Centres will probably not be required to accommodate any more than 300 dwellings. A strategy that directs a large proportion of growth in the west of the district might be considered as an option if justified by evidence contained within the employment study that, at the time of writing, work under preparation. 4.3 If we take the 6,500 dwellings likely to be required in the period 2011-2026 and apply the above principles we can refine the assumptions to give the maximum amount of housing land that any single sub-area might have to accommodate.