Support

Representation ID: 22273

Received: 21/01/2022

Respondent: Miss Jodi Stokes

5.0 HEALTH AND WELLBEING

5.1 Draft Policy HW1 (Health and Wellbeing) provides a strategic context for how health and wellbeing are influenced by planning and provides links to other policies in the Black Country Plan. We agree this strategic policy is important in order to support strong, vibrant and healthy communities with accessible services and open spaces that reflect current and future needs and support communities’ health, social and cultural well-being to support strong, vibrant and healthy communities, by ensuring that a sufficient number and range of homes can be provided to meet the needs of present and future generations; and by fostering well-designed, beautiful and safe places, with accessible services and open spaces that reflect current and future needs and support communities’ health, social and cultural well-being and the ‘social’ objective of sustainable development. It also reflects chapter 8 of the NPPF.

5.2 Part C of draft Policy HW1 requires that new developments, where relevant, provide a range of housing types and tenures that meet the needs of all sectors of the population including for older people and those with disabilities requiring varying degrees of care; extended families; low income households; and those seeking to self-build as set out in Polices HOU2 and HOU3. Part F refers to the provision of a range of quality employment opportunities for all skillsets and abilities along with the education and training facilities to enable residents to fulfil their potential and support initiatives to promote local employment and procurement during construction as set out in Policies HOU5, EMP2, EMP3 and EMP5. Whilst we agree that all of the requirement’s a-k are important to improving local health and wellbeing, we consider that the provision of a mix of housing and access to employment to be particularly important and agree they will form a key part in improving the wider social, economic and environmental circumstances that determine land. This highlights why the provision of land locally to meet current and future housing and employment needs, is particularly important to local people.