Meeting with Lewes District Council's Peter Gardiner, Lead Councillor for Planning, and Lindsay Frost, Director of Planning and Environmental Services

Thursday 27 March from 7 til 8pm at the Elephant and Castle chaired by Oliver Dudok van Heel from TTL Business Group

Agenda

6.45pm arrive, get drinks, 7pm prompt start

15 minutes for Lindsay Frost and Peter Gardiner to talk about Planning and Climate Change - including the latest PPS1 Planning and Climate policy and the Lewes District Framework Core Strategy

10 minutes for Patrick Crawford of Transition Town Lewes to talk about our Energy Descent Action Plan

35 minutes for chaired questions and discussion, finish at 8pm

Main points

how can TTL support the District Council with respect to TTL's aims?

  • one possibility for TTL to engage with and support the District Council is to provide our expertise to add to the evidence base required to support their policies on climate change and reduction of CO2. The District Council's Local Development Framework will be tested by an independent government inspector and requires a robust evidence base to support it

what counts as evidence?

  • look at the Technical Guide of the Code for Sustainable Homes which sets out how new developments will be assessed
  • look at the Merton Rule and other local authorities' Development Plans which have already been approved
  • evidence must be locally focused rather than globally and relevant district-wide and must contain other valid planning points
  • possible evidence for strong policies relating to climate change might be:
    • Lewes is a pioneering Transition Town and could be seen as a demonstration area, the problem remains it is not yet district-wide
    • there are several major flood-risk areas in the district
    • possibilities in this area might be coastal wind generation

how else, apart from providing evidence for policies, might individuals or groups engage with the District Council?

  • by commenting on individual planning application
  • get involved with the Local Development Framework participatory events

what is the status of statements of public opinion?

  • on both levels of decisions on planning applications and planning policy, statements are determined on valid planning points, rather than numbers
  • the Town Council is also a statutory consultee

does the Council have policies on providing more land for growing?

  • the difficulty of finding land near to consumers was cited as well as the problem of how to develop rural communities

an interest was expressed in where TTL would put new housing developments to meet targets for new homes, posing the problem of sustainability in terms of their dilemma of developing on floodplains in Lewes and Newhaven being near to jobs and cutting transport emissions and the alternative of expanding villages

  • it was noted that food security requires the revival of locally grown food in city gardens and rural communities and was suggested to research and compare the ecofootprint of city and rural communities in this regard

the question about TTL's stance on the proposed North Street development was asked

  • it was suggested to hold another meeting on this issue

Links to relevant policy documents for local planning

Below you will find links to relevant national, regional and local policy documents for the Lewes District. Go to our policy pages for more information.

government policy

PPS1: Delivering Sustainable Development

Supplement to PPS1: Planning and Climate Change

PPS3: Housing

PPS22: Renewable Energy

PPS25: Development and Flood Risk

Code for Sustainable Homes - setting standards of environmental sustainability in new homes

Code for Sustainable Homes – Technical Guide - sets out requirements for the Code and the process for obtaining a Code rating

Building a Greener Future

The Merton Rule - "groundbreaking planning policy, pioneered by the London Borough of Merton, which requires the use of renewable energy onsite to reduce annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the built environment"

regional policy

The South East Plan

local policy

Core Strategy of the Draft Lewes District Local Development Framework

Sustainability Appraisal of the Local Development Framework

Get involved: contact one of the Group contacts on the Groups page