Hertsmere Borough Council
Hertsmere Local Plan Draft Regulation 18 Consultation Document
PART 3 Hertsmere’s Towns and Places
Chapter 12 Introduction - Hertsmere’s Towns and Places
Celebrating Hertsmere
12.1.1. Hertsmere is comprised of a range of settlements, places and communities, each with their own character and identity that contribute to the Borough’s overall distinctiveness. The emerging Local Plan seeks to respond to the distinctive qualities of these settlements, while supporting sustainable growth across the Borough. In delivering the spatial strategy and wider vision for Hertsmere, new development should respect and positively contribute to local character, ensuring that proposals respond appropriately to their context in terms of both function and design
12.1.2. To assist in understanding and recognising Hertsmere’s local distinctiveness, and to establish place-based priorities for guiding investment, growth and new development, this part of the emerging Local Plan is organised around Hertsmere’s settlement areas. The table below identifies the settlement areas.
12.1.3. The settlement areas identified in the emerging Local Plan will contribute to the implementation of the Borough’soverallspatialstrategy.Theyprovidea framework for directing growth in a way that responds to local circumstances and needs, including the delivery of affordable housing, employment opportunities and necessary supporting infrastructure. To guide this process, the Plan establishes a long-term vision and a set of place-specific policies for each area. Together, these provide a clear basis for shaping investment priorities and for assessing how development proposals should respond to the opportunities of each part of the Borough.
12.1.4. Further guidance will be prepared that will work alongside the Local Plan, to support the delivery of the vision for each character area. This will include
Hertsmere Borough Council
Hertsmere Local Plan Draft Regulation 18 Consultation Document
the preparation and publication of settlement specific design codes as supplementary planning documents, which will be subject to consultation before being formally adopted. These documents will provide additional detail to help guide future development and investment
12.1.5. TheBorough’ssettlements, their neighbourhoods and their communities are shaped by a variety of social, economic and geographic relationships. These relationships do not necessarily correspond neatly with the administrative boundary of the borough. It is understood that people’sexperienceofplace is influenced by connections that extend beyond Hertsmere, including nearby towns, adjoining districts, the neighbouring parts of Greater London and the Capital itself. In recognition of this wider context, the vision and place principles for each character area have been developed with an understanding of these cross-boundary relationships and the role Hertsmere plays within the broader sub-regional area.
12.1.6. To set clear expectations in this respect, and to ensure that new development is sensitively integrated into our neighbourhoods, the Local Plan sets out a future vision, key spatial objectives and place principles for each area. These should be used to inform investment decisions and guide development proposals.
12.1.7. In addition, each character area is accompanied by site allocation policies. These establish land use principles and design guidelines for the allocations that will deliver growth over the plan period. These sites have been included within the Local Plan because they are considered necessary to support the delivery of the spatial strategy for the Borough.
Hertsmere Local Plan Draft Regulation 18 Consultation Document
Delivering the spatial strategy and meeting local needs
12.1.8. To facilitate successful and sustainable place-making across the Borough the emerging Local Plan will include site allocation policies36. These will be detailed policies for development sites that are critical to the delivery of the spatial strategy. The delivery of the Local Plan’s site allocations will play an important role in addressing the Borough’s needs for new housing, workspace and main town centre uses, along with supporting infrastructure; including social, transport and green infrastructure.
12.1.9. Each site allocation will include information on the development capacity of a site for different types of land uses. The identified site capacities are indicative and should not be read prescriptively for the purpose of planning applications, where the optimal capacity of a site must be established on a case-by-case basis using the design-led approach, and having regard to relevant planning policies. The table below summarises the minimum scale of delivery outcomes expected by the site allocations, both Borough-wide and by character area. This demonstrates that the Local Plan has identified sites to provide sufficient supply to meet need over the plan-period. It will also demonstrate how the delivery of the site allocations could exceed the Borough’s15-year housing target as well as exceeding the needs identified in our latest Employment Land and Retail Capacity Studies. This will allow for flexibility and enable the delivery of sufficient homes and non-residential floorspace, should some of the site allocations not be brought forward for development or their delivery delayed.
36 For clarification, the Hertsmere Local Plan Regulation 18 Consultation Document does not contain site allocations but does identify candidate sites. Some of these could be selected and become the site allocations that are included in the Draft Local Plan, to be published under the forthcoming Regulation 19. It highlighted that the site allocations will need to at least meet and deliver the Borough‘s housing needs over the plan period.
Hertsmere Borough Council
Hertsmere Local Plan Draft Regulation 18 Consultation Document
12.1.10. The table below illustrates the site allocations and indicative delivery outcomes over the Plan Period. The table is included in the Consultation Document for illustrative purposes, as in the absence of site allocations37 precise figures cannot currently be identified.
Table 12.1: Settlement Areas and Development for Plan Period
37 For clarity, the Consultation Document identifies and seeks engagement on Candidate Sites, which will be considered for allocation at the next stage of the plan-making process under the Town & Country Planning Regulations 2012 Regulation 19.