News round-up 21 January 2010

New rail link planned between London and Oxford

Chiltern Railways has formally signalled plans for the first new rail link from London to a major British City for 100 years in the shape of proposals to create a new main line from London Marylebone station to Oxford.

The works necessary to provide the link to Oxford are now the subject of an application under the Transport and Works Act and are likely to be considered by a public inquiry.

Subject to planning consents, the multi-million project would see Oxford linked to the Chiltern mainline by a stretch of new railway to be constructed at Bicester, allowing new direct passenger services to operate between the university city and the capital. The centrepiece of the Oxford link would be Water Eaton Parkway in North Oxford; an integrated transport hub linked to the A34, A40 and Oxford city centre.

Read the Network Rail press release

 

Liverpool development agreement

Planning consultancy DPP has secured agreement on a development framework for Liverpool’s Edge Lane Central area. The agreement paves the way for a series of formal planning applications later this year.

DPP was brought in by Derwent Holdings in 2008 following a decade-long wrangle between the developers and the city council over the future of Edge Lane.

The approved development framework for an area covering 28 hectares includes provision for a retail and leisure park, a 2.3 ha Victorian style park, five-a-side football pitches, cycle ways, the relocation of industrial units, the expansion of the Rathbone Hospital and six new family houses.

Read the DPP press release

 

Power project backed

North Lincolnshire Council has backed plans for a 290 megawatt biomass-fuelled power station proposed by Drax Power for a site near the western entrance at the Port of Immingham. The scheme is subject to a section 36 consent from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Read the North Lincolnshire Council press release

 

Mosque proposal falls

Plans for a 12,000-capacity mosque near the 2012 Olympic site have stalled after the group proposing the scheme failed to present a master plan for the project to Newham Council by this month’s agreed deadline.

If the scheme – earmarked for a site at Abbey Mills, East London - had gone through it would have been the country’s biggest mosque

Tablighi Jamaat, the group behind the plans, has been occupying an illegal temporary mosque on the site after temporary planning permission ran out in 2006.

The council is now taking enforcement action over the use of the site.

Flooding deal

Engineering and environmental consultancy Royal Haskoning has won a competitive bid to provide surface water management planning services plus a water cycle study for a consortium of four local councils in Staffordshire. The work will identify areas at high-risk of surface water flooding.

Read the Royal Haskoning press release

 

Hackney master plans adopted

Master plans for Hackney’s two major town centres have been adopted by the east London borough following extensive consultation with residents, community groups and local businesses.

The plans for Hackney Central and Dalston will guide growth and investment over the next 15 years. They have now been formally adopted as interim area action plans and will form a material consideration in the assessment of planning applications.

View the town centre interim area action plans at:
www.hackney.gov.uk/dalston-aap
www.hackney.gov.uk/hackney-central-aap

In a separate development London’s biggest share of local authority new build funding has gone to the council and will be used to provide more than 80 social-rent homes.

Hackney has been allocated £6.26m in the second round of funding from the Homes and Community Agency. This is the top allocation for the capital and represents a quarter of the London total of £28.69m, shared by 15 boroughs.

A full list of the successful local authorities and the schemes to be funded is available to download from the HCA website.

 

Go-ahead for new homes at Totton

New Forest District Council has granted detailed planning approval for more than 100 residential units to be built by Linden Homes at Totton Sports Club in the town following outline permission granted by the Communities Secretary on appeal in March 2009.

View the Linden Homes website for more information

 

Dinosaur print SSSI proposed

Natural England has announced that the dinosaur footprints and tracks at Ardley Trackways, near Bicester in Oxfordshire, have been notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, making it the first SSSI to be designated by the organisation for its geological features alone. There is now a four-month period for public responses.

Ardley Trackways contains an array of fossilised trackways formed 165 million years ago by Jurassic dinosaurs moving along part of an ancient shoreline. Footprints have been found from large, vegetarian dinosaurs related to Brachiosaurus and also from carnivorous dinosaurs similar to Tyrannosaurus.

The trackways were formed on a mudflat and the M40 motorway now runs alongside the area where the dinosaurs left their footprints. Such extensive and relatively complete dinosaur trackways are otherwise unknown in England and are very rare internationally.

Read the Natural England press release

 

 

Creative industries plan for Cardiff

Welsh deputy first minister Ieuan Wyn Jones has announced plans to develop a new centre for the creative industries in Wales – which includes a new BBC drama production centre - based on the 27-acre Roath Basin site in Cardiff

The Welsh Assembly Government is working in partnership with Cardiff Council and the BBC on the project. An application will be submitted to the local planning authority in February.

Roath Basin, owned by the Welsh Assembly Government, is the largest single remaining undeveloped site in Cardiff Bay. 

Read the Welsh Assembly Government press release

 

High hedge legislation planned for NI

Proposed legislation designed to help people adversely affected by high hedges bordering their domestic properties has been published for consultation by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Read the Northern Ireland Executive press release

Access the consultation directly

 

Denbigh flood project

A new £5m flood risk management scheme for Denbigh in North Wales has been given the green light by the Welsh Assembly Government. Funding will come from the Assembly Government (51 per cent), the European Union (40 per cent) with the remainder coming from the local authority (nine per cent).

The scheme will fund large sections of work throughout the town in a bid to protect homes and businesses from the threat of flooding, particularly from Henllan Brook, a tributary of the River Clwyd, which runs west to east through some extremely old culverts underneath many of Denbigh’s streets and has a limited capacity to cope with flooding.

As well as improvements to drainage systems, the scheme will include the development of a flood risk management plan for the town.

Read the Welsh Assembly Government press release

 

Skippers becomes RTPI president

Planning consultant and planning inspector Ann Skippers has become President of the Royal Town Planning Institute in succession to Martin Willey. She will be president for 12 months.

Skippers, who runs a planning consultancy with her husband, lives in Chelmsford, Essex, and was senior vice president. She has more than 20 years' experience in planning and planning education and specialises in planning appeal work and training as well as acting as a non-salaried Planning Inspector.

Read the RTPI press release

 

Newmarket fears

Parliament has been told that plans for a major housing scheme in Newmarket – known as the Hatchfield farm development – threatened the horse racing industry which provides much of the town's employment.

That claim was made during a Commons debate in Westminster Hall by Richard Spring, the Conservative MP who represents West Suffolk.

Spring complained that the local planning authority was supporting the scheme in its Core Strategy which has just been examined by a planning inspector.

The MP claimed that the planning authority was pressurised to include the site for housing because of the provision it must meet as part of regional housing targets. He said the Hatchfield proposals for 1,200 new homes would create a traffic problem which has an adverse effect on the horse training industry.

View the Hansard record, 19 Jan 2010 : Column 62WH

 

 

Flood strategies

Building houses on stilts, creating floating communities and returning urban areas to salt marsh should all be considered as part of radical approaches to tackling the threat posed to coastal cities by flooding, a report has advocated.

The study, by the Royal Institute of British Architects' think tank Building Futures and the Institution of Civil Engineers, warned that the UK's 12,000km of coastline would be increasingly at risk of floods.

Rising sea levels, sinking landmass in the south and increased storminess will all put coastal towns and cities at risk, and planners will need to decide how to tackle the threat, the report argued.

The report focuses on two at-risk cities, Hull and Portsmouth, and lays out possible strategies for coping with flood risk up to 2100. The scenarios were masterminded by architects, civil engineers, planners and city designers, developers, policy-makers, ecologists and "futurologists".

Read the think tank’s press release

 

Roger Milne

21 January 2010