English Heritage Consultation Understanding Place: Historic Area Assessment - principles and practice
copy of email from John Silvester to English Heritage [mailto:Sarah.Prince@english-heritage.org.uk]
Sarah, as promised herewith my comments on behalf of POS for the LGA.
The Planning Officers Society represents the most senior professionals and managers of planning functions in the English Local Authorities. We set out to:
- Act as an advocate and promoter of Local Government planning
- Assist and advise the Government and the Local Government Association on planning matters andrelated issues
- Act as a centre of excellence, undertake research and promote best practice in planning matters
- Promote all aspects of the built and green environment by working closely with other organisations and profession
The Society's aim is to ensure that planning makes a major contribution to achieving sustainable developments, from national to local level, in ways, which are fair and equitable and achieve the social economic and environmental aspirations of all sectors of the community.
I have not been able to provide track changes since no version was provided direct; for your reference I used the document version at http://www.rtpi.org.uk/download/7765/Understanding-Place-Historic-Area-Assessments-Principles-Practice.pdf
A. General Comments
The document should prove immensely useful to planning practitioners specialising in historic settlement assessments; however, I believe it would benefit from cross-reference to the more general place shaping activities of local authorities (see below). The level of detail is sometimes excessive, such as section 4.4. overall, I suggest it would benefit from an executive summary.
B. Detailed Observations
a) Para 1.2.5 suggest insertion of new paragraph referring to local authorities place shaping activities, e.g. "Planning Together" guide published by Communities and Local Government and the RTPI in 2007. now updated by PAS; see http://www.pas.gov.uk/pas/core/page.do?pageId=109601 It covers, amongst other matters, the role of planning and the local strategic partnership in place shaping, joining up the sustainable community strategy (SCS), local development framework (LDF) and local area agreement (LAA), and planning's contribution to local area agreement delivery.
b) Section 2.3 - suggest there is a need to refer to the fact that the extent to which these typical questions will apply depends on the scale of the area being assessed; i.e. if a whole town then more general questions will apply, as opposed to a smaller area when other, or all, questions will apply. Need for cross ref to 3.4.3.
c) Para 2.5.4, last sentence needs adjustment. Village Design Statements were often adopted as Supplementary Planning Guidance, but under the prevailing planning system it is most unlikely that any would be adopted as Supplementary Planning Documents. SPDs are part of the formal LDF whereas SPGs are not.
d) Para 3.1.1; suggest you add another bullet - "the scale of the area to be assessed in relation to the desired planning outcome".
e) Para 3.1.4; at end of paragraph suggest the section would be improved by moving to here para 3.4.3 (and table).
f) Para 4.4.6, 11th line. The grammar appears to go awry ref "directories appear earlier, are more". Should this say "earlier directories are more"?
g) Section 4.5, first text box line 4 of main text. Suggest delete "comprehend" and insert "often comprise".
h) Para 5.3.2, penultimate bullet (on page 33), there is a misuse of terms. FYI Area Action Plans and Supplementary Planning Documents are integral parts of a Local Development Framework. Suggest these two (AAPs and SPDs) appear in brackets after LDF; i.e. "Local Development Frameworks (including Area Action Plans and Supplementary Planning Documents)".
i) Section on Case Studies; suggest maps of each area would be helpful.
I hope you find these observations helpful. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.
John
John Silvester DipP(Dist), MRTPI, MISPAL, MCMI
Communications Manager
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