North Street Proposals

On Wednesday 29th November, Lewes District Council contacted 27 ‘Key Stakeholders’ with a view to preparing a “Planning Vision for the North St Area”.
To see their documents - click here  Stakeholder Documents and here  map.

As you may know from the last Stop Press item - which can still be read on our news section, Lewes Matters have been calling for a comprehensive Development Brief from the Council for the Phoenix Industrial Estate for over a year; more recently for a Brief that would include the related Wenban Smith and Bus Station sites.

A Development Brief would demonstrate leadership and vision backed by planning policy for what should be expected from any developer for the future of the sites and their impact upon the town.

The proposal to create some form of vision statement is, of course, welcome, albeit somewhat late in the day.

But let us be clear from the outset - this exercise stops short of being a Development Brief., prepared in anticipation of developers who may come forward.

Neither does it guarantee broad public consultation

It will have to take into account the considerable constraints of catching up with an enormous proposal, given its scale and proximity to the Conservation Area. Although no formal application has yet been made, the Phoenix project is already advanced in its own vision.

This has clearly fixed the attention of townspeople, Councillors and Planning Officers for over a year.

In the coming weeks Lewes Matters will outline the way it believes it can best contribute to such a document and will welcome all constructive thinking via this website.

We also suggest you contact other key stakeholders –available via the link above- and begin to channel your views to them.

What should a Development Brief contain?

Lewes Matters are, of course, pleased to take as full a part in the consultation process as possible and we will shortly prepare our “vision for the North St. Area”, as requested  by the Council. This process, outlined by Cllr Neighbour in his letter to Key Stakeholders, will not, we repeat, lead to the creation of a comprehensive Development Brief.

Charles Style, of Angel Property, has repeatedly drawn similarities between proposals for the Phoenix Industrial estate to those for the old Brewery site in Dorchester.

To see the Development Brief prepared by West Dorset District Council for that site – a typical Development Brief - click here  Weymouth Avenue Development Brief.

We contacted Lindsay Frost, LDC's Head of Planning, to find out why a Development Brief was not being pursued in this instance.He responded very promptly, and gave us his permission to publish his clarification on the website.

"I know that there has been a clamour from some quarters to prepare a "Development Brief " for the North St area and I would like to explain why we have gone down the "Planning Vision" route instead.

Development Briefs are prepared in order to provide detailed planning guidance for a site which has been allocated in an agreed planning policy document for new development or redevelopment. The Brief amplifies the existing planning policy and covers detailed matters like layout , access, design and materials. The Brief we did for the Lewes House site is a case in point.

The existing Lewes District Local Plan (2003) identifies the North St area as employment land where other uses will only be considered if ,exceptionally, it is demonstrated that there is no likelihood of continuing viable employment use.

It follows that a Development Brief is not the appropriate approach because, in looking at a range of possible mixed uses for the site, the Council would not be amplifying an existing agreed policy, it would be creating a new planning policy for the area.

We discussed the position with ATLAS ( Advisory Team on Large ApplicationS ) over the summer and sought their view on the way forward, given their experience on large development proposals across southern England. We came to the view that preparation of a "Planning Vision" would be the best way for the Council take a leading role, as local planning authority, in shaping the future of this important site and initiating a review of planning policies which can feed into the emerging Local Development Framework. I hope that the place of this "Planning Vision" exercise in the wider programme of LDF work is clear in the note we circulated with our letter to key stakeholders earlier in the week. The diagram in Appendix C to that note should be particularly helpful .

I know that people are happier with terms they know like "Development Brief" , but we are engaged in a different piece of work here and I hope that this e-mail clarifies things for you."