Building with Nature Jenny Stuart Building with Nature Assessor – Cornwall Wildlife Trust
What is green infrastructure? Multifunctional green spaces Strategic Connected Networks Includes established and new features
What “Good” Looks like Building with Nature provides a definition for good green infrastructure
Rationale for a new standard Translate knowledge & evidence into good practice “Raise the baseline” Accelerate delivery of new high quality homes Supporting delivery of “whole lifecycle approach” 25 YEP commits to delivering ‘new, strong standards for green infrastructure’
Why a benchmark? “We need a tool to help planners.” (Landscape Institute) “We need a framework of principles to define what high quality green infrastructure looks like.” (Natural England) “ Agreeing a framework of principles at an early stage could help speed up the planning process, which represents a potentially huge cost saving for us.” (Planning agent for volume housebuilder)
Feedback from customer consultation Flexible (type/scale) Simple/Plain English Not overly onerous Nothing new required for a ‘good’ application Sensible in its expectation e.g. within ‘red line’ Quality not quantity (‘expert scoring mechanism’)
The benchmark 23 standards in total 5 core standards Then 6 standards within each of three themes: Wellbeing Water Wildlife
Award stages & levels Candidate award at planning stage Full award post-construction Two levels: Achieved Excellent
The standards can What? New Policy Retrofitting development be applied to: Infill, urban Buildings, Examples GI strategy, extension, green framework, residential, spaces, social plan, SPD commercial, housing, new developments mixed use town centre existing projects Local Owner, Who? Developer authority manager policy Draft Pre-construction When? Final Post-construction OR Award
Cornwall focus Cornwall Council and Cornwall Wildlife Trust are working together to trial Building with Nature on projects within Cornwall. Meets the Council’s aims of improving quality Meets the Trust’s aims to build houses for people and wildlife
Case Studies
Elderberry Walk, Bristol Developer: HAB Housing Development of 161 new homes on the former School site, focused around a central green street, with retained trees, new multifunctional green infrastructure, a communal wildlife garden and edible planting.
Elms Park, Cheltenham Developer: Persimmon Homes + Bloor Homes Development of up to 4115 new homes, 24ha of employment land to be used for commercial and community facilities, plus new multifunctional green infrastructure including woodland habitat and areas for sport and food production.
Chesterton Farm, Cirencester Developer: Bathurst Development Limited Development of up to 2350 new homes, 9ha of employment land to be used for commercial and community facilities, plus green cycle links, and multifunctional green infrastructure including playing fields and allotments.
Gloucester Services, M5 Developer: Westmorland Limited + Gloucestershire Gateway Trust A north and south bound motorway service area on the M5 motorway, with café amenity buildings, a tourist information point, and green infrastructure including an outdoor picnic area, play facilities and habitat provision.
Cotswold District Council – GI Strategy A Strategy which forms a constituent part of the evidence for the Local Plan. CDC have successful created a strategy which satisfies convergent priorities, balancing significant planning constraints with the need to build new homes.
Recommend
More recommend
