After being successful in receiving one round of funding late last year, the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group has also been successful in receiving further grant funding to create a Design Guidance document. Work has only just begun, and is expected to take a good few months to complete.
Urban Design seeks to understand, shape, improve and plan for our places and spaces, ensuring that neighbourhoods work well and look great. In this package, AECOM’s professional urban designers work alongside bodies such as the Parish Council and Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group harnessing their ideas and local knowledge to produce bespoke urban design guides or codes for potential development or regeneration sites.
It is sadly too easy for bad development to take place. This package is designed to ensure that any future development coming our way is influenced by and reflects the views of the local community – for example, that homes be designed in the local vernacular and respect existing assets, that schemes encourage walking and cycling and reduce the impact of traffic, and that open space is provided to benefit the wider community. It’s about making sure that development of our neighbourhoods are attractive, interesting and in-keeping – something local people can be proud of.
The final report is expected to provide quality and viable design guidance that can be embedded into our neighbourhood plan as expectations, enabling us to both shape and guide all future development.