Case Study : 1200 Home Land Promotion

BRIEF

Several land owners approached us with a site for inclusion in the Maldon District Council emerging Local Plan. The area is in desperate need of housing and North Fambridge is ideally situated to provide this.

KEY ISSUES

Appraisal and Strategy; Planning Application; Specialist Reports; Project Management; Urban Design; East.

LPA

Maldon District Council

CHALLENGES

With this particular site, what was immediately evident was its close proximity to excellent transport links, and its location on the edge of the village settlement.

However, we needed to provide the evidence bases for how and why the site was sustainable in economic, social and environmental terms.  We also crucially needed to engage actively with the local council and community, promoting the land into the Maldon Local Plan, monitoring the status of the development framework and coordinating promotion efforts accordingly. 

Such schemes therefore require ongoing research, in depth analysis, careful project management and urban vision.

SOLUTION

Our planning consultants analysed Maldon District Council's housing figures and identified that Maldon could not show a five-year housing supply. Our proposed development would therefore go some way to assisting the local council in meeting the requirements of their five year plan.

Further to this we produced a Development Framework and Vision document to inform the future strategic development of land at North Fambridge, as identified in the Local Development Plan Preferred Options for strategic growth.

Our research and analysis demonstrated that a higher housing allocation than that set out in the Local Development Plan could deliver a more sustainable community with the delivery of important social infrastructure in North Fambridge.

We engaged with relevant consultancies to provide ecological, flooding and transport analysis and their findings fed into the place making, settlement and environment strategies for the site. The result was a vision framework which embraced and met the three key tenets of sustainability in development according to the NPPF, proposing a settlement which was viable on an economic, social and environmental level.

The vision document is the first stage in an ongoing strategy for this site and was produced as a result of extensive research, active discussions with the council and engagement with the local community, producing a website to keep them informed. The Vision Document was produced in-house by Plainview Planning’s urban design and graphics team, drawing upon a technical evidence base provided by Mayer Brown.

NORTH FAMBRIDGE (UP TO 1200 HOMES)