Object
Draft Black Country Plan
Representation ID: 43911
Received: 10/10/2021
Respondent: Barratt West Midlands
Agent: Turley Associates
3.17 The NPPF was updated in July 2021 with a much greater emphasis placed on the delivery of high quality design. This saw significant amendments to chapter 12 of the NPPF and was supplemented by the publication of the National Design Guide (2021) and National Model Design Code (Parts 1 and 2) (2021). Together these documents confirm the Government’s intent to guide the delivery of well-designed places and demonstrating what ‘good design’ means in practice.
3.18 The NPPF now establishes a need for local planning authorities to ensure that visual tools such as design codes and guides are used to inform development proposals to provide maximum clarity about design expectations at an early stage to assist in providing a framework for creating high-quality places, with a consistent and high-quality standard of design to inform development proposals.
3.19 Barratt therefore consider that Policy CSP4 should be updated to reflect this change in
national guidance and instead of establishing prescriptive design criteria within a strategic policy, there is instead an opportunity for the principles identified within draft policy CSP4 to inform the future development of Local Design Codes for the Black Country.
3.20 In any event, throughout the masterplanning undertaken to date, Barratt has sought to ensure that the illustrative masterplan is grounded through high quality urban design and placemaking as evidenced through the Vision Document enclosed at Appendix 3.
3.21 The nature and distinctive qualities of the local landscape surrounding land at
Pennwood has been taken into account when developing the siting, scale, and design of new development. In addition, the masterplan has been informed by additional
technical work on heritage and ecology allowing the proposed layout to better accommodate landscape and visual screening but also deliver significant ecological benefits through the green infrastructure network.
Green Belt