Bournemouth Borough Council: Our friends down at Bournemouth Borough Council currently have an interesting draft planning policy open for public consultation.
It is a draft Supplementary Planning Document on everyone’s favourite planning issue – Parking (well so you would believe from public comments on planning applications). The first of the two main sections provides new layout and design guidance. Standard parking spaces are now 2.6m x 5.0m rather than 2.4m x 4.8m presumably to accommodate the increasing number of 4x4s which seem necessary around town these days. The second section provides the standards in terms of number of spaces. It takes a “zonal approach” meaning the Borough is divided into areas with different accessibility levels. Zone 1 (most accessible) includes the town centre with Lansdowne and Westbourne and Boscombe central areas. Zone 2 is about 400m around the smaller shopping centres such as Winton, Charminster and Southbourne. Zone 3 (least accessible) is everywhere else. “Benchmark” parking standards are provided for the various types of use in these zones which provide the “likely parking requirement”. It seems that these are neither maximum or minimum standards – “Robust justification should be provided to support a variation from the benchmark figures.”
The table of residential parking standards of course is delightfully complex broken down into the number of habitable rooms and depending upon whether spaces are allocated or not. What strikes me looking through the table is that there is surprising little reduction for Zone 1 compared to Zone 3. Where I would usually expect say a 50% reduction based on the difference of the most accessible locations to the least, here there is typically only 0.1 or 0.2 of a space per unit reduction. So ten one bed flats in the least accessible location would require 11 unallocated spaces and in the town centre it would require 10.
If you fancy commenting on this one you have until 03 February 2014. Click on the cover image above to go straight to the document which includes details of who to email with your comments.
In addition there is currently a consultation across the whole of Dorset relating to waste and minerals planning policy. Dorset County Council, Borough of Poole and Bournemouth Borough Council are currently consulting on the issues in relation to a proposed new Waste Plan to provide for Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole’s waste management needs. They are also consulting on a series of proposed mineral extraction or quarrying sites across the county (click here for a leaflet with a map showing where).
The consultation on these runs until 13 February 2004.
Links to all three consultations can be found at Bournemouth Borough Council’s helpful Current Consultation page.
And of course if you wish to discuss the implications of any of these policy consultations or indeed any other planning policy matter please get in touch.