Our Commitment to Strategic Major Developments
What are major and strategic major developments?
The definition of major developments includes residential developments of 10 or more dwellinghouses or residential development in excess of 0.5 ha, the provision of buildings(s) creating over 1,000 sq.m or more, or, development on sites of 1.0 ha or more.
Developments that would significantly exceed these thresholds are ones that the Council treats as being more ‘strategic’ in nature. Because of their size, they may be developments that have phased build-out over a number of years. Strategic developments will typically be located within and close to the towns of Ashford and Tenterden and may be allocated in the Local Plan for development. On occasion, unexpected development may also come forward in village locations. We have a Strategic Applications Team which primarily deals with these larger types of schemes.
Our Development Management Team deal with a wider range of applications including major developments at a smaller scale in both urban and rural locations. Both Teams work closely with our specialist urban design, conservation, tree and planning policy officers.
Our approach
We are committed to;-
- Building confidence – through an open dialogue that builds trust including giving pre-application advice,regular meetings on emerging schemes and willingness to enter into planning performance agreements and through the opportunity for applicant pre-application stage presentations to Councillors on appropriate strategic development schemes.
- Professionalism - by encouraging pre-application planning advice and by providing prompt feedback to a high standard in order to help reduce uncertainty.
- Adding value in design – by the testing and refinement of emerging pre-application proposals through our officer inputs together with any issues that are raised through the design review process.
- Scheme delivery – if the Council accepts the conclusion of a viability assessment that a development would not be viable to take forward if it were required to be fully planning policy compliant but the Council considers that overriding planning benefits would occur by from the development being delivered then the Council is willing to assist delivery by adopting a 'deferred contributions' approach.
- Managing the process – by using our Strategic Sites Manual as a simple project management tool setting out in easy stages what will be needed and by providing S106 agreement templates for early consideration.
Effective pre-application discussions
Besides promoting the benefits of seeking pre-application advice with the Council we also encourage similar pre-application discussions with the external technical partners with whom we work closely (for example Kent County Council (Highways & Transportation, Flooding and Ecology) and the Environment Agency) prior to making an application. Doing so will generally help reduce the need for subsequent amendments and related reconsultation so will generally help us reach a decision more quickly.
Post-permission, many of these principles will apply to approvals of further detail, such as applications for approval of reserved matters where fine detail of buildings and layout come forward for approval, as well as the discharge of planning conditions requiring the approval of technical information.
For strategic development that is carried out in phased build-out over a number of years, we encourage the setting up of regular series diarised meetings to help manage delivery and build confidence in outcomes.
