Planning Portal Blog

View more information on the Sheffield plan

Sheffield City Council this week started preliminary consultations on its new development plan which includes the possibility of providing thousands of new homes in a series of urban extensions.

The Sheffield Plan will cover the whole area of the so-called steel city except for the area in the Peak Park) and will consider development options up to 2034. It will replace the current core strategy which was adopted in 2009.

Under consideration as part of this exercise is a report from prize-winning consultancy Urbed which has recommended that some 100,000 new homes are built in and around the Sheffield conurbation including 30,000 outside existing built-up areas.

The report claimed that around 32,000 homes could be accommodated on existing brownfield land in the area and on brownfield land that was likely to become available over the 20-year plan period. It also suggested that a further 18,000 homes could be created through urban intensification, including the reuse of car parks, the subdivision of large homes and increasing the density of council estates.

The report proposed that the Neepsend and Attercliffe neighbourhoods could be returned to residential use. These areas are currently mainly in low density commercial use.

The report also stressed that consideration should be given to the creation of large urban extensions in Mosborough, Waverley, Bassingthorpe, Oughtibridge and Stocksbridge. These could accommodate some 25,000 homes, the report said.

It also made the case for creating a joint development corporation for Sheffield and Rotherham, with powers to plan development, borrow money and compulsorily purchase land.

Roger Milne

November 12, 2015

Greater Cambridge increases homes target

View more information about the South Cambridgeshire District Council local plan

Planning authorities in and around Cambridge, one of the fastest-growing areas of England, have increased their local plans’ housing target by 500 homes.

This is the result of extra work commissioned by Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils after planning inspectors suspended the examination of their strategies.

The inspectors questioned if more than the 33,000 homes put forward in the two Cambridgeshire council’s draft local plans were needed to meet local needs, and whether the strategy of focusing the majority of homes in new settlements and villages was sound.

Reports published this week (9 November) from independent experts have said that 33,500 homes would be needed by 2031 to meet local needs, just 500 more than originally put forward.

The reports also stated that the extra work commissioned has confirmed the two councils’ strategy to deliver growth through new towns and villages and protecting the green belt from significant releases was the right plan for the Greater Cambridge area.

Since the draft local plans were submitted, promoters of the new town north of Waterbeach and new village at Bourn Airfield have stated the developments could begin earlier. The reports recommend this approach.

To meet requirement for the additional homes needed by 2031, more land than currently earmarked for housing near Cambridge Airport is now proposed for development. The proposals could see 1,200 homes built north of Cherry Hinton and toward Teversham.

The two councils are planning consultation on these latest proposals starting next month (December) before submitting modification to the draft plans for consideration by the inspectors who are expected to resume examination of the strategies around Easter 2016.

View more information about the Cambridge City local plan

Roger Milne

November 12, 2015

Planning round-up 12 November

View the planning application on the Taunton and Deane Borough Council website, application number 42/14/0069

Decision on Taunton urban extension deferred

Members of Taunton Deane Borough Council’s planning committee have deferred a decision on a major mixed-use urban extension between Comeytrowe in Taunton and Trull after insisting the scheme was deficient in respect of highways, education, and health and access provision.

In a statement the Somerset council explained: “Whilst accepting that the site has been identified in the council’s core strategy, members felt that the master plan proposal was currently not adequate particularly in respect of infrastructure proposals for roads, schooling and health.

They have invited the consortium of developers to work with the council, the three Parish Councils and other key stakeholders on a revised master plan that will ensure the development is deliverable and sustainable.”

The consortium is hoping to build up to 2,000 new homes and provide employment floor space, a primary school, a park, a local centre and public open space.

TCPA report calls for 310,000 new homes a year

Figures just published show that young people across England are struggling more than ever to live independently because of the cost of housing and current shortages of new homes.

According to a new research project commissioned by the Town and Country Planning Association the housing requirement to meet projected household formation until 2031 is actually lower than previously anticipated because younger people are already finding they cannot afford to form independent households.

The research highlighted that the Government was already falling short of its targets to build new homes. Only 54 per cent of the homes required have been built since 2011.

To catch up by 2020 with the number of homes suggested by the projections over 310,000 homes a year over the next five years will be required, the report proposed.

The project ‘How Many Homes’ was funded by the Lady Margaret Patterson Osborn Trust, and Places for People.

The research, which drew on data from the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Office of National Statistics, was undertaken by Neil McDonald, (previously Chief Executive of the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit) and Professor Christine Whitehead from the LSE.

View more information on the Graven Hill custom-build project

Whitehall cuts accepted by DCLG, Defra and DfT

The Department for Communities and Local Government has agreed to cut 30 per cent from its budget over the next four years after reaching a provisional spending review deal with Chancellor George Osborne.

He signalled that three other Whitehall departments were in the same position: the Treasury, Transport and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Osborne insisted the savings would be made by a combination of “further efficiencies in departments, closing low-value programmes, and focusing on our priorities as a country.”

View more information

Cherwell custom-build LDO approved

Cherwell District Council has formally adopted a Local Development Order (LDO) for its Graven Hill custom-build project. Up to 1,900 new homes are set to be built on the former MOD site at Bicester in Oxfordshire.

House builders will have to comply with a master plan and design code but the LDO, the first of its kind at this scale in the UK, will allow “some individuality and variety” according to the council’s lead member for planning, councillor Michael Gibbard.

Green-light for Bradford urban village

Proposals for a new £150m ‘urban village’ between Bradford and Shipley have been approved by Bradford City Council. The scheme, involves up to 1,000 new homes, a school, village centre and shops.

The 30-hectare New Bolton Woods scheme is a joint venture between the local authority and regeneration firm Urbo.

Sport England has objected to the plans because of the loss of two football pitches, triggering government consideration of the proposals.

View more information on the New Bolton Woods development

Prison programme to release urban housing sites

Chancellor George Osborne and Justice Secretary Michael Gove have unveiled proposals to build nine new prisons in a move which ministers say will allow the Government to close old Victorian prisons in city centres and sell the sites for housing.

The administration has claimed this will result in some 3000 new homes being built in urban areas. The Victorian prison site at Reading will be the first to be sold.

Five of the new prisons will be open before the end of this parliament, ministers insisted. The Government will also complete the new prison being built at Wrexham in north east Wales, and expand existing prisons in Stocken and Rye Hill over the next five years.

View more information on the Crawley local plan

Pocket parks initiative

Community groups supported by local authorities have been invited to apply for a slice of £1.5m funding, which could see up to 100 under-used sites in deprived urban areas outside London turned into small parks.

The scheme to create so-called ‘Pocket Parks’ echoes a successful New York initiative which has been pioneered in London.

Proposals could include creating wildlife habitats, transforming run-down gardens or simply creating green oases in bustling neighbourhoods.

Pocket parks are defined for this programme as a piece of land of up to 0.4-hectares, although many are around 0.02-hectares, the size of a tennis court. The Department for Communities and Local Government has published a prospectus.

View more information

London round-up

Hounslow Council in west London has given the green light to mixed use scheme in the High Street designed to provide over 134,000 square feet of commercial floor space comprising retail and restaurant use, a new multiplex cinema and 525 new homes, most is a 27-storey residential tower, and a new public square in Hounslow High Street,
An Opportunity Area Planning Framework designed to deliver more than 25,500 new homes and create up to 65,000 jobs at Old Oak and Park Royal in west London has been approved and adopted by the Mayor of London.
A joint venture set up last year to build homes at disused gasholder sites in London and the south east of England has announced plans to redevelop the site of the former Fulham Gasworks in south west London into a mixed-use scheme with up to 1,900 homes.
Southwark Council has given the go-ahead for the redevelopment of Manor Place Depot, Walworth in south London. The approval includes listed building consent for the refurbishment of the existing Grade II listed Pool House and Wash Houses. The scheme will provide 270 new homes and 730 square metres of commercial floor space.

Energy project round-up

More consultation into plans to frack for shale gas in North Yorkshire has started. Third Energy submitted a planning application to frack at a site near the village of Kirby Misperton in Ryedale in May. North Yorkshire County Council said it had requested further information from the company. This has prompted a further round of consultation.
The community group behind a £1m hydro-electric scheme in Abingdon, Oxfordshire has scrapped its plans, citing financial and organisational problems partly prompted by changes in government support for community power projects. Abingdon Hydro had planning permission to put two 10-tonne hydrodynamic screws at the town’s weir at Abbey Meadow to generate electricity for up to 200 homes.
Two more power plant schemes have submitted to the Planning Inspectorate as Nationally Significant Infrastructure projects. One is a proposal to convert two disused slate quarries in Snowdonia into a 99-megawatt pumped storage facility. The other is a refuse-burning power plant at Edmonton, north London which would produce 70-megawatts of electricity and low-carbon heat.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark has dismissed an appeal over a three-turbine onshore wind project proposed for a landfill site at Workington, Cumbria. The scheme had been blocked by the county council. The inspector who held the recovered appeal had also recommended refusal. Clark’s decision letter agreed that there would be adverse visual impacts and harm to the setting of heritage assets. He also concluded that local community concerns over landscape and residential amenity had not been satisfactorily addressed.

Crawley local plan endorsed

Crawley Borough Council has announced it will adopt its new local plan next month (December) after the planning inspector who examined the strategy concluded it was sound subject to modifications which the planning authority has agreed. The land-use strategy will make provision for 5,100 dwellings in total over the plan period 2012-2030.

Kent infrastructure spending gap identified

Long-term growth in Kent could be jeopardised by a gap between housing and infrastructure, according to a new report commissioned by Kent County Council.

The report highlights the significant growth anticipated in Kent over the next 16 years and identifies £6.74bn of infrastructure developments required to support approximately 160,000 new homes and over 135,000 jobs. It also recognises a funding gap of £2bn which, if not addressed, will impede the county’s growth.

View more information on the Kent County Council website

Merseyside devolution makes progress

The five council leaders of Merseyside plus Halton Borough Council in Cheshire have “agreed in principle” a deal with the Government to devolve more powers from Whitehall.

Part of the proposal will include plans for a directly elected mayor for the Liverpool city region.

The “devolution deal” will still need to be agreed by each of the six councils individually, with St Helens believed to be the most sceptical.

View more information on the BBC website

Key WI sites relisted

Four buildings with links to the Women’s Institute have been recognised to mark the organisation’s centenary. The West Sussex home of the WI’s first chairman and its training college in Oxfordshire are to be relisted on the National Heritage List for England. Their listings will now mention the WI.

The listed statuses of The Fox Inn in Charlton, West Sussex, where the first WI meeting was held exactly 100 years ago, and for an early WI building in Northumberland are also being updated.

Go-ahead for Newcastle redevelopment

Newcastle City Council has approved developer McAleer & Rushe’s £100m plans for a mixed-use scheme in the Newgate Street area of the city.

The proposals include a 269-bedrooms hotel, student housing and 2,000 square metres of commercial space for retail, leisure or professional services use.

The 575-bedrooms student housing element of the scheme will be operated by the UK’s leading provider of purpose built student accommodation, Unite Students.

View more information on the Staffordshire County Council website

Stafford link road approved

A major road scheme to ease traffic congestion in the centre of Stafford and support new homes planned for the western side of the town has been approved by Staffordshire County Council.

The Stafford Western Access Route will connect the A518 Newport Road with the A34 Foregate Street.

The project is backed by the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Enterprise Partnership, which secured funding through the Government’s Growth Deal.

Woking development makes waves

Woking Borough Council has voted to let New Vision Homes submit a planning application for 984 homes in, the Surrey town as part of a project which will involve the demolition of 600 properties on the existing Sheerwater Estate.

The plans involve at least 460 new affordable homes, a health centre and leisure and retail facilities. The demolition plans are being fiercely contested by some residents.

View more information on the Sheerwater regeneration

Top tree named

An ancient pear tree due to be chopped down to make way for the HS2 high-speed rail line has been voted the best tree in England following a poll organised by the Woodland Trust. The Cubbington pear tree is believed to have been growing near the Warwickshire village for more than 250 years.

Legal round-up

A High Court judge has sentenced a man who refused to demolish a house he built behind straw bales in the Surrey Green Belt to three months in prison, suspended for six months.
A row over plans by CG International for more than 500 new homes in an area of outstanding natural beauty in Kent has taken a new turn now the Campaign for Rural England has announced a judicial review challenge over the approval given by Dover District for a 130-bedroom hotel, 521 homes and 90 retirement homes.
A West Midlands council has won a Court of Appeal land and planning battle over a site earmarked for a replacement mosque in Dudley.
The Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge to Selby District Council’s adoption of its Core Strategy Local Plan, in a key ruling on the duty to cooperate.
Two men have been ordered to pay more than £50,000 after running an unauthorised airport car park near Gatwick which had not been given planning permission by Mid Sussex District Council.

Starter homes will be part of the s106 mix insists minister

Planning minister Brandon Lewis has told Parliament that it will be up local councils to negotiate the mix of starter and affordable homes in s106 agreements.

But the minister made it clear that the Government would expect all reasonably sized schemes to include a proportion of starter homes.

The minister was quizzed by MPs on the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee about government policy on starter homes, which forms a key part of the administration’s new Housing and Planning bill, on Monday evening (9 November).

Lewis told the committee that the government is “very clear that an affordable home does not need to be limited to an affordable home for rent”.

But the minister added that the mix of tenures agreed in a section 106 deal would remain subject to negotiation between developers and planning departments. “A continuation of the current situation” he insisted.

View more information

Neighbourhood plans boost housing strategies

New neighbourhood planning powers are boosting plans for house building by more than 10 per cent, Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis has claimed.

This is based on data gathered by the Department for Communities and Local Government during May and June 2015 regarding areas with neighbourhood plans that have allocated housing sites and have been in force for over six months.

For these areas housing allocations in the neighbourhood plans were assessed against housing allocations in the corresponding Local Plan.

Roger Milne

Housing and Planning bill survives Parliamentary scrutiny during second reading

View a transcript of the debate

The Government’s Housing and Planning bill faced heavy opposition in Parliament this week as the legislation comfortably negotiated its second reading stage in the Commons.

The bill is the first to be dealt with under the new rules which mean only English and Welsh MPs can vote on the bill as its measures don’t apply in Scotland.

Labour shadow communities secretary John Healey accused ministers of turning their back on localism. He argued the Conservatives were in such a panic about house-building performance they had drafted a bill which gave them “wide-ranging powers to impose new house building and override local community concerns and local plans.

“With a total of 32 new housing and planning powers for the centre, this legislation signals the end of localism.”

During nearly seven hours of debate in the Commons on Monday, MPs traded statistics about the impact of the bill’s provisions on social housing. Labour and Lib-Dem MPs predicted a “fire sale” of affordable homes.

And they lined up to question who would be able to afford the Government’s new “starter homes” quoting statistics produced by Shelter that a family living on the Chancellor’s new minimum wage of nine pounds an hour in 2020 would not be able to afford a starter home in 98 per cent of the country.

London MP Helen Hayes, a former planner, complained: “This Bill lacks any vision for planning, regarding it as simply a constraint to development.

“Through a multitude of different measures, including “in-principle” planning consent, the removal of the need for section 106 contributions from starter home developments and the provision for Secretary of State call-in of planning decisions, this bill will take power away from our local communities, while also removing vital checks on the quality and sustainability of development.”

Former Conservative housing minister Mark Prisk voiced concern over planning department staffing. “In some authorities, the system is grinding to a halt because of the lack of planning officers able either to produce a local plan or to drive forward negotiations with experienced developers.”

Communities Secretary Greg Clark insisted the Government’s proposals would make sure that the planning system was “speedier and more accommodating of the need for more homes, especially on brownfield sites”.

He told MPs: “We have built 260,000 affordable homes, nearly a third of them in London, and in the next five years we will build 275,000 more, the most for 20 years.”

View more information on the Housing and Planning bill

Roger Milne

Chancellor confirms £100bn spend on infrastructure will be centre-piece of Autumn Statement

View the news story on GOV.UK

Chancellor George Osborne has committed to spending £100bn on new UK infrastructure over the lifetime of the current Parliament.

That commitment to new roads, rail, flood defences and key energy projects came as he named the members of the new National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) and spelled out in more detail the Commission’s initial terms of reference.

Osborne has made it clear that infrastructure expenditure will be a key element of the Government’s current spending review, the results of which will be published later this month in the Autumn Statement.

A suite of asset sales which the Treasury expects to raise billions of pounds is being identified which will be ploughed back into infrastructure projects. More details will be announced in the Statement.

Osborne announced that seven “commissioners” will serve alongside NIC chair Lord Adonis. They are:

Lord Heseltine, former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister
Sir John Armitt CBE, former chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority and author of the eponymous review into infrastructure planning commissioned by the Labour Party
Professor Tim Besley CBE, professor of economics and political science at the London School of Economics
Demis Hassabis, vice-president of engineering at Google
Sadie Morgan , design panel chair of HS2
Bridget Rosewell OBE, former chief economist to the Greater London Authority
Sir Paul Ruddock, chairman of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Commission’s initial focus will be in three key areas. These are:

Northern connectivity, particularly identifying priorities for future investment in the North’s strategic transport infrastructure to improve connectivity between cities, especially east-west across the Pennines
London’s transport system, particularly reviewing strategic options and identifying priorities for future investment in large scale transport improvements, on road, rail and underground, including Crossrail 2
Energy, particularly exploring how the UK can better balance supply and demand, aiming for an energy market where prices are reflective of costs to the overall system.

Roger Milne

DCLG clarifies new housing element in Development Control Order regime

The Government has clarified its new proposals for including new homes in individual development consent orders (DCOs) and confirmed that the maximum number of permanent homes will be 500.

New draft guidance just published said ministers won’t limit the types of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) that will be allowed to include homes.

The guidance said homes would be allowed if they are “close to” the proposed infrastructure or if there is a functional need for permanent homes in cases where homes are required for construction workers or operational reasons.

Housing “up to one mile away from any part of the infrastructure for which consent is being sought” will be considered close enough to the infrastructure to be included in a NSIP, the guidance said.

However, where “a large amount of housing” is proposed to meet a functional need, the guidance said “it may be more appropriate for this to be in a location that is not in the immediate vicinity of the infrastructure project”.

The advice said fewer homes would be considered appropriate where policies like those protecting green belt land and heritage assets indicate that development should be restricted. Homes included on the basis of proximity would be expected to include affordable housing and “an element of starter homes”.

“It will be open to the Secretary of State to grant consent for the infrastructure, but refuse consent for some or all of the housing” noted the guidance.

View the briefing note

Roger Milne

Northants housing scheme allowed on appeal despite neighbourhood plan conflict

Communities Secretary Greg Clark has allowed on appeal outline proposals for a 39-home residential development on the edge of a Northamptonshire village. The scheme was in conflict with the emerging East Barton Neighbourhood Plan (NP). The proposals had been originally blocked by Wellingborough Borough Council.

Intriguingly the decision letter was issued on the day the NP referendum was held. Some 92 per cent of those who voted backed the East Barton NP on a turnout of nearly 28 per cent of those eligible to vote.

The inspector who held the recovered inquiry recommended the appeal should succeed. The Secretary of State agreed with the inspector that the planning authority could not demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land.

And like the inspector he argued that the “limited” harm to the landscape of the scheme was mitigated by the proposed containment of the development by existing hedging, a road and allotments.

The decision letter noted that the scheme was both in conflict with the development plan and the NP. However the SoS acknowledged that the development plan was out of date, the NP had not been “made” and given the absence of a five year supply of sites, the relevant NP policies for the supply of housing could not be considered up to date.

Clark acknowledged that that the conflict with the emerging NP should be given significant weight given the support for the plan locally and its advanced stage.

Nevertheless the SoS concluded that the harm identified was “insufficient to significantly and demonstrably outweigh the acknowledged benefits of this sustainable development”.

View the correspondence

Roger Milne

Further review of Welsh National Park and AONB governance announced

View the news story on GOV.WALES

Welsh Planning and Natural Resources Minister Carl Sargeant has announced a further review of the governance and purpose of National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). This news came in after the devolved administration‘s publication of the report of the Independent Panel which has been examining the subject over the last 12 months.

That three-person panel chaired by Professor Terry Marsden produced a lengthy report for the Government which runs to more than 250 pages and proposed nearly 70 separate recommendations.

Now Sargeant has asked Lord Dafydd Ellis-Thomas, a leading member of the Welsh Assembly, to lead a so-called Future Landscapes Working Group, involving representatives of the National Parks, AONBs, interest groups, business, and local government which will consider the recommendations and assess their implications. This latest exercise will involve another report due next year.

The recommendations now under scrutiny include:

Making no change to the name or legal status of National Parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Strengthening the support and delivery role of other bodies
Creating a National Landscape Committee.

Marsden’s report was adamant that the existing national park authorities should retain their strategic planning policy and planning development control functions. It also argued for the retention and development of what it called “flexible” AONB management models.

The Panel also argued that Natural Resources Wales and local authorities should “have regard” to the statutory partnership plans which each National Park and AONB (collectively known as the National Landscapes of Wales) will have to draw-up.

The Panel recommended the application of the so-called Sandford Principle, which confirms the primacy of the conservation purpose, should be applied across all the designated landscapes.

Sargeant said: “The Panel have endorsed my view that a fresh approach to purposes and governance is long overdue, and I agree with their summary that this is necessary to better respond to increasingly complex environmental challenges, inequalities in well-being and health, and to deliver more vibrant rural communities.

“The report makes 69 recommendations covering a raft of proposals and observations on purposes, principles, vision, governance models, planning, and funding. The scale and scope of these recommendations is considerable, and further work is now needed to understand their potential benefit and their consequences.”

Roger Milne

Planning round-up 5 November

Districts pitch their local plan reforms

District councils have outlined a series of reforms aimed at simplifying the local plans regime which have been submitted to the Government’s Local Plans Expert Group.

The reforms outlined in the submission from the District Councils’ Network (DCN) include proposals for a staged-plan examination, the production of strategic plans across housing market areas, slimmed-down plans and more protection for councils with well advanced plans from ‘5-year supply’ appeals.

Councillor Gillian Brown, DCN lead for planning and leader of Arun District Council, said: “From a DCN perspective, our members require a clear explanation from government as to what the early 2017 deadline for producing local plans will actually entail.

“And on a more fundamental level, the Government should review how they envisage resourcing the large number of plans that will be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate at around the same time.

“Otherwise we risk creating a frustrating scenario, where districts which have compiled their plans according to the timetable find themselves sat in a long queue, waiting for an inspector to call.”

The DCN stressed district councils must be fully resourced and urged the Government to change the planning fees regime “to enable full cost recovery”.

View the release on the ONS website

Latest UK population projections

The UK population is projected to increase by 9.7 million over the next 25 years from an estimated 64.6 million in mid-2014 to 74.3 million in mid-2039. This is 420,000 higher than the 2012-based projection for 2039 according to the latest assessment compiled by the Office for National Statistics.

The 2014-based projections predict a slightly faster rate of increase than the 2012-based projections did, equating to about an extra 14,000 people per year on average over the 25 years to 2039.

The UK population is projected to reach 70 million by mid-2027. Assumed net migration accounts for 51 per cent of the projected increase over the next 25 years, with natural increase accounting for the remaining 49 per cent of growth.

Over the 10 year period to mid-2024, the UK population is projected to increase by 4.4 million to 69 million. This is 249,000 higher than the previous (2012-based) projection for that year.

The population is projected to continue ageing, with the average age rising from 40 years in 2014 to 40.9 years in mid-2024 and 42.9 by mid-2039. By mid-2039, more than 1 in 12 of the population is projected to be aged 80 or over.

Revised CPO guidance published by DCLG

The Department for Communities and Local Government has published revised guidance on the compulsory purchase order regime and the Crichel Down rules for the disposal of surplus land acquired by, or under the threat of, compulsion.

The guidance has been updated to reflect legislative changes and case law since 2004.

Draft updated advice was published for consultation in March and the final version of the document contains minor amendments to reflect comments. The guidance only applies to England. Ministers have announced they will review the delegation to inspectors of compulsory purchase order decisions.

View the guidance

Competition to develop smarter urban spaces launched

Businesses can win up to £35,000 to develop digital projects that help make urban spaces better and smarter for people.

The Government’s Innovate UK’s IC tomorrow programme is looking to award up to £35,000 each to four businesses to meet a series of challenges facing so-called connected cities.

Businesses will have the opportunity to work alongside high-profile challenge partners Transport for London, Centro, Clear Channel and Atkins.

This initiative recognises that cities are becoming increasingly connected with services such as transport and energy managed by intelligent networks. The challenge is to get citizens involved in this evolving digital backdrop.

One area of interest will focus on citizen input to city design. This will concentrate on innovative ways of encouraging citizens to share their data in a bid to improve the planning, design and management of urban space. This will be in partnership with Atkins.

View more details for the Lincoln Transport Hub Scheme

Energy project developments

Multifuel Energy Limited has obtained a development consent order from the Department of Energy and Climate Change for a 90-megawatt plant which will produce electricity after burning fuel derived from refuse and industrial and commercial waste, such as wood. It will be built at the site of the existing Ferrybridge C power station at Knottingley, West Yorkshire.
The world’s largest and the UK’s first floating offshore wind development approximately 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead has been approved by the Scottish Government.
Statoil, the Norwegian multinational oil and gas company, has been granted a marine licence for its application for a pilot park of five floating 6-megawatt turbines. Unlike more conventional offshore wind farms, the turbines will be attached to the seabed by a three-point mooring spread and anchoring system.
Proposals for a 24-turbine wind farm on moorland between Loch Rannoch and Loch Erich, in Perthshire have been rejected by the Scottish Government on a technicality. The applicant company was not a legal entity when the application was submitted.
The first planning application for shale gas exploration in Nottinghamshire has been submitted to the County Council. Island Gas Limited (IGas) is seeking planning permission to undertake exploration for shale gas on land to the north east of Misson in Bassetlaw, which is close to the Nottinghamshire, Doncaster and North Lincolnshire local government boundary

London round-up

Department for Communities and Local Government ministers have dismissed three appeals involving mosque development in West Ham, east London. One involved an enforcement order. The main appeal was over what would have been the UK’s largest mosque, a scheme refused by Newham Council.
MCC has been granted planning permission by Westminster City Council to redevelop the south-western corner of Lord’s cricket ground. The so-called South-Western Project, which includes an enlarged stand and a new Tavern Pub, is phase two of the master plan for Lord’s.
Plans for a second London ‘Boxpark’ has been given the green light by Croydon Council. It will be located on the Ruskin Square site near East Croydon station and is set to open next summer. The development will consist of 97 shipping containers.
London Mayor Boris Johnson has allowed a controversial scheme for 97 homes in Putney, south west London which had been refused by Wandsworth Council on the grounds the development would be too high.
Johnson has called in proposals for a housing-led mixed-use development involving a 28-storey residential tower on a site next to Barking station refused last month by the planning authority against the advice of officers.
Transport for London has begun a further round of public consultation on revised proposals for Crossrail 2. This would connect the National Rail networks in Surrey and Hertfordshire via new tunnels and stations between Wimbledon, Tottenham Hale and New Southgate, linking in with London underground, London Overground, Crossrail 1, national and international rail services.
Councils in the capital are drawing up plans to set up a pan-London vehicle for development, in the wake of the extension of the Right to Buy.
London boroughs believe that they could deliver more houses in the capital by using economies of scale and sharing development ambitions. Officials at umbrella group London Councils are currently working up detailed proposals for the venture.

Lincoln city centre revamps

Two major developments expected to change the face of Lincoln city centre have been given the go-ahead by city councillors.

Plans for the multi-million pound Lincoln Transport Hub project and the first phase of the Cornhill Quarter regeneration scheme have been approved.

The proposals include the demolition and replacement of the existing bus station and an improved rail station, a multi-storey car park, new commercial floor space, new retail provision and flats.

View more information about the Cornhill Quarter regeneration plans

Newcastle green infrastructure initiative

Funding for a project to investigate new ways of implementing green infrastructure schemes has been secured.

The £110,000 project will see consultancy Arup, Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council join forces to bring best-practice knowledge to the region, drawn from green infrastructure projects that have been developed around the world.

The group will work with colleagues in New York, London and Melbourne to review the latest thinking and develop a new community-led green infrastructure scheme in Melbourne which will shed light on opportunities in Newcastle.

£31m lottery funding for landscape betterment

The landscape which was home to a group of notorious 17th Century witches is to receive a share of £31m Lottery funding.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has announced it is providing £2m to restore wildlife and the fabric of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. It is one of 31 projects to receive funding across the UK.

The 13 areas benefiting from HLF’s investment stretch from the Orkney Isles in Scotland to Penwith’s peninsula on the south western tip of the mainland.

Go-ahead for Leeds campus homes

WYG planners have secured outline approval for up to 72 new homes at Leeds City College’s Horsforth Campus. The Campus is currently home for a further education facility which is due to close next year. Alternative residential use of the green belt site will provide investment in college facilities elsewhere in the city.