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Planning Together For Central Lancashire City
With Central Government extolling the virtues of joint working and partnerships, it may be useful to look at how this is happening in reality in Central Lancashire.
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Central Lancashire City is a named coined by Preston City Council and the two adjoining authorities of South Ribble and Chorley Borough Councils. It has a combined population of over 340,000. Preston is the largest urban area with suburbs that spread to the south of the river Ribble, further south are the free standing market towns of Leyland and Chorley flanked by smaller former mill townships and rural villages. The M6 motorway connects all three local authority areas as does the west coast mainline railway.
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A joint approach to planning here goes back many years. The Central Lancashire New Town was designated in the early 1970s based on the existing towns of Preston, Leyland and Chorley. The Development Corporation lasted until 1986, but well before then the original expansion plans had been scaled back and although the next twenty years has seen some completion of New Town proposals other sites remain undeveloped.
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Joint working between Chorley and South Ribble Councils has been occurring more recently – guiding the redevelopment of a Royal Ordnance site that straddles the local authorities’ common boundary. The emerging new settlement – Buckshaw Village - is a mixed use urban village which could ultimately have 3500 dwellings and 8500 jobs. The three Councils are working together in other ways including through shared services, one example of which is South Ribble and Preston have recently combined their building control functions.
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The Northern Way identified eight City Regions. The Central Lancashire City Region is one of three in the north west of England along with Liverpool and Manchester. However it is a broader concept than these two major cities, encompassing most of Lancashire including Blackpool, Blackburn and Burnley as well as ‘Greater Preston’. The latter is the term that groups Preston, South Ribble and Chorley in the new emerging Regional Spatial Strategy for North West England.
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Independent research sponsored by the Government Office for the North West shows that the three authorities comprise a single housing market area. The new impetus for joint working originally came out of the belief that the three Council areas comprise a single integrated local economy. Research findings confirmed this to be the case and that this ‘core area’ of the City Region has the best prospects for growth, making it integral to fulfilling the Northern Way’s aim of closing the output gap with South East England. The three authorities have adopted a joint economic regeneration sub-regional strategy and vision document under the Central Lancashire City banner.
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How this growth potential can best be translated into policy terms has recently been debated at the North West Regional Spatial Strategy Examination in Public, however that, as they say, is another story.
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In terms of Local Development Framework preparation, the three authorities originally set off independently. However, the experience of jointly producing the sub-regional economic regeneration strategy, which convincingly proved that the combined area performs the role of one travel to work area, showed up the need to share expertise efficiently and to work together in a more unified and coherent way.
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This has manifested itself in combined working on the LDF evidence base which to date has seen joint procurement of various studies including office needs and strategic flood risk assessments. The three authorities have also made combined representations on the Regional Spatial Strategy and have aligned Local Development Schemes allowing for the joint production of LDF documents.
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These efforts have recently culminated in the publication of a joint Issues and Options Paper on LDF core strategy matters. This may ideally lead to a joint core strategy itself or at least three strategies that have many common policy elements.
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The LDF joint working has involved all officers in the three policy teams sharing the logistical and presentational tasks leading up to combined community involvement on the core strategy issues and options. A dedicated web site has been set up (www.centrallancscity.org.uk) to enable local people and organisations to access the documents and make comments. Following a joint meeting of three authorities’ Cabinets the three LDF Member Working Groups now meet together on a regular basis to steer the process.
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Despite political changes the momentum of joint working has been maintained, such that the economies of scale are becoming self-evident. The challenge now is to secure the benefits a properly co-ordinated development plan will bring so as to deliver better spatial planning of the whole area and enable sustainable growth for the benefit of the whole city region.
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Julian Jackson – Planning Policy Manager, Chorley Borough Council,
Joanne Macholc – Local Plan Manager, South Ribble Borough Council,
John Crellin – Planning Policy Divisional Manager, Preston City Council
This item was uploaded: 23/02/2007
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