What can be learned from the project?
Two of the principle anxieties when establishing a body of this kind are to ensure that it has the capacity to carry out the task and is not likely to be “captured” by minority interests. The fact that it is not suggests that there are a series of barriers that must be overcome and that, with few exceptions, these barriers are cultural and skills related, rather than, as some might suspect, financial, technical or legal.
For the approach to succeed, it must be embraced by all the players in the game: landowner and developer (including house builder); design team professionals (including masterplanners, engineers etc); and local planning authority (including officers and members). A failure of any of the players to see this approach as having potential will almost certainly see it fail either to be included in the masterplan and planning application in the first place or to feature in the final planning consent and S106 agreement.
Topics associated with this project
Brownfield, Community-led, Governance, Planning, Private sector, Yorkshire and Humber