Agenda item

The Executive considered a document entitled Residential Design Guide Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), Regulation 13 Consultation Draft. The SPD set out principles to help ensure that the Borough received high quality new residential development to create attractive and well-functioning environments in which people were happy to live.  The SPD covered the whole of the Borough including town centres, and rural and urban areas; it would be flexible enough to be applicable to the full range of residential scales, from small householder projects right up to the creation of large areas of new urban fabric. 

The 2017 Design Guide would replace the Borough’s following design guidance for residential development:

·             Residential Development in Settlement Areas – Development Control Guidelines Supplementary Planning Guidance, 2002

·             Design for House Extensions Leaflet; undated

Both of these documents were now dated as they had been prepared under an earlier legislative regime.  In addition, these documents did not deal with the detail and scope of residential design covered by the proposed 2017 Residential Design Guide.

Members were reminded that, at present, the key Local Plan policies relating to residential design were DM9 of the CS&DMP DPD and TC11 of the Camberley Town Centre AAP.  Both policies set out a series of high level non-specific design principles to guide all forms of development in the Borough.  The SPD would provide detailed and specific guidance for residential development based on these more general principles.

The Executive was advised that the purpose of the SPD was to give guidance to the development industry, the Council, and the public on how to ensure that good design was achieved in new residential development in the borough.  It was intended that the SPD would enable the Council to effectively defend its decisions at appeal on matters relating to the design of residential developments.

The Draft SPD would be released for public comment in March 2017 and subject to a five week consultation period.

RESOLVED thatthe Draft Residential Design Guide Supplementary Planning Document – Regulation 13 Consultation, as attached at Annex A to the agenda report, be approved for public consultation.