Sustainability Appraisal (SA) is a legal requirement in England and Wales and considers the environmental, social and economic implications of implementing policies, plans and programmes.
LUC was appointed by the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) to complete the SA of its Core Strategy, building on earlier work carried out by LDNPA and third party consultants.
LUC sought to bring a fresh outlook and approach to the SA, providing incisive analysis and recommendations to inform the final Core Strategy policies, based on our extensive experience of both SA and our understanding of the unique characteristics and issues facing the Lake District National Park.
Although the scale of proposed development was small, LUC recognised a number of sustainability challenges that the Core Strategy and SA needed to address including:
• A highly sensitive natural environment.
• An affordability gap between local housing and earnings.
• Poor access to many services.
• A high level of reliance on relatively low paid farming and tourism sectors.
Equally, LUC identified that the National Park offers a range of opportunities, including:
• The power of the high quality natural environment as an economic driver.
• High levels of social capital and participation of many long term residents.
• High levels of entrepreneurship.
In planning our approach to the SA we sought to avoid lengthy and repetitive assessment tables and instead pioneered a holistic approach that reflects the requirement for Core Strategies to be read as a whole rather than a collection of individual policies. It was also necessary to take account of LDNPA’s locally distinctive approach to the Core Strategy, based on settlement function and spatial areas rather than a more traditional settlement hierarchy.
At public examination led by an independent Planning Inspector the Core Strategy was found to be sound and with respect to the SA, it was concluded that:
“SA has been satisfactorily undertaken at key stages of the production of the Core Strategy… it is clear that the SA process has informed the submitted DPD”.
The Core Strategy has now been adopted by LDNPA.
