Gardens at heart of planning guidelines
20 August 2012
New guidance is encouraging those making decisions on planning issues to put green space at the heart of new building projects from the outset, including domestic gardens.
'Planning for a Healthy Environment' is the result of wide consultation with organisations including the RHS, led by the Town and Country Planning Association and the Wildlife Trusts.
Although the guidelines have tacit government support, they are not statutory requirements. However, it's hoped they will become 'best practice' for councils interpreting the new National Planning Policy Framework, published in March.
'The general move in development is multifunctional spaces that work hard – providing urban drainage, diffusing city heat islands, providing play areas,' says RHS Horticultural Adviser Helen Bostock, who helped draft the guidelines. 'This looks at how you can achieve that in different ways, whether it's green roofs, or a wider network of green spaces.'
The guidelines emphasise the central role played by the planning system in protecting and restoring the natural environment. People's connection with nature can increase their health and wellbeing, one of the range of social, economic and environmental services provided by the natural environment without which society could not function.'
They break new ground by listing sites such as gardens and village greens as significant habitats for wildlife and important parts of green infrastructure, as well as specially protected areas such as nature reserves. Among the examples of sites which should be given special consideration in planning decisions are:
- domestic gardens
- village greens
- school and hospital grounds
- community gardens
- road verges
- allotments and city farms
- living roofs and walls
The guidelines also establish 10 principles to ensure green space is given priority in new developments. Among them are the recommendation that green infrastructure should be part of the core design of such developments from the start, making improvements that 'connect with the wider countryside and reflect and enhance local distinctiveness and landscape character'.
Highlights include:
- safeguarding, enhancing, restoring and creating wildlife habitat' to integrate biodiversity with the built environment
- creating connections between sites: 'simple proximity can be enough to functionally integrate an individual green space such as a private garden into a wider network, enabling species to move and helping to reduce the effects of climate change', it says.
- including accessible spaces: 'Green infrastructure within a development should include attractive, engaging and safe outdoor spaces which meet a variety of social, health and well-being needs for local people. Accessibility need not always be direct and physical – it can be visual and auditory,' it says.
Councils are called to include allotment and garden societies in consultations when preparing local plans for green infrastructure, and recommends a minimum provision of 20 standard allotment plots per 1000 households.
- Allotments... also have a strong element of direct community ownership and management.'
- 'City farms and community-managed gardens and parks are increasingly seen as examples of how local people can make a real difference.'
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