Comment

Representation ID: 21480

Received: 11/10/2021

Respondent: Charles Church Homes

Agent: Claremont Planning Consultancy

4. Health and Wellbeing

Policy HW1 – Health and Wellbeing

4.1. This policy seeks to ensure that regeneration and transformation of the Black Country will create an environment that protects and improve the physical, social and mental health and wellbeing of residents. As part of this, it provides a list of requirements that should be delivered through new developments, including enabling active and healthy lifestyles, providing a range of housing types and tenures, and be designed with residential amenity and health and wellbeing in mind. It is considered reasonable to expect new developments to respect these requirements and these will be delivered through the proposed development on land at Corbett Hospital.

4.2. Importantly, as part of this policy it establishes that developments should ‘protect and include a range of social infrastructure such as social care, health, leisure, sport and recreation…. close to where people live’. Unlocking residential development on land at Corbett Hospital will directly contribute towards achieving this objective, by realising capital receipts for the NHS through the disposal of this surplus land. There is a mandate that 50% of this capital receipt is to be reinvested in the local health economy, thereby ensuring that local people will directly benefit from delivery of the development. If the Plan seeks to constrain the ability to secure development on the site through the proposed allocation as Local Green Space, this will have a detrimental impact in

respect of the realisation of capital receipts and accordingly reduce the potential for investment to be secured for local health developments. This will directly conflict with the objective of Policy HW1, and the wider aims of the emerging BCP.

4.3. Furthermore, it is considered that by seeking to resist development on the site, the authorities will be restricting the potential for development in a highly sustainable location within the urban area. This could, to a degree, reduce the need for development to be delivered in less sustainable locations either within the Borough or in neighbouring authorities, which should be a key consideration for the Plan and the need to ensure that it is consistent with national policy aims of achieving sustainable development. Ensuring that development is directed to appropriate locations such as this is a consideration for Policy HW1 specifically, as by securing development within the urban area it is more likely that future residents will be able to utilise active and environmentally sustainable forms of travel for accessing places of work, education and day-to- day services and facilities