Shropshire Hills AONB development plan shelved

Ambitions for a development plan for the Shropshire Hills AONB have been shelved by its advisory body.

The Shropshire Hills AONB Partnership said its desire for greater protection for the designated landscape in planning had been satisfied by Shropshire Council’s new local plan.

The plan, the latest draft of which is due to be published on Friday, for the first time includes a dedicated policy on development within the AONB.

Phil Holden, AONB Partnership manager said: “It’s a real step forward for the AONB and its recognition in planning policy.

“It has a specific policy for the AONB and the AONB is also mentioned numerous times across the local plan in lots of other policies.”

In light of this, members of the partnership agreed at a meeting on Tuesday not to progress with developing a standalone development plan document.

The idea was mooted at a previous meeting of the partnership after Arnside and Silverdale AONB in north west England became the first in the country to publish such a plan, which was praised in last year’s Glover Review.

Mr Holden said: “In light of how the local plan has taken the AONB forward with this specific policy and recognition in lots of other policies, we think actually that a specific, separate planning policy document for the Shropshire Hills AONB at this time isn’t going to be necessarily a useful way ahead.

“We also have to recognise the scale of the challenge. This has only been done in one AONB, a small AONB.

“It did take five years to achieve this document for Arnside and Silverdale, with a lot of input from both the councils and the AONB team and realistically we don’t feel that capacity is available on either side.

“The recommendation for the partnership today is that this was a good thing to look at as an idea – who knows, in the long term it may come back – but for the foreseeable future we propose to put it aside.”

Eddie West, Shropshire Council’s principal planning policy officer, told members that clarity over the AONB’s status and protection had been “greatly enhanced” in the emerging plan.

He said while the partnership’s intentions were “laudable”, a separate plan would be unlikely to achieve anything further than the new local plan would.

Mr Holden said the key concern for the partnership was major development “of all kinds” in the AONB, and this had been made clear in the partnership’s response to the last stage of consultation on the emerging local plan.

Mr Holden said the partnership had made clear its firm objection to one particular site, Snatchfield Farm in Church Stretton, which is allocated for up to 70 houses.

It is the only site earmarked for major development in the Church Stretton ‘place plan area’, one of 18 areas covering the whole county.

Mr Holden said part of the problem was that the council had not identified any settlements near Church Stretton as ‘hubs’ or ‘clusters’ – meaning the town itself bears the full burden of development in its place plan area. He said this should be reviewed by the council in the future.

Mr Holden said: “One of the issues for Church Stretton is that the pressure all comes on the town. That may be a difficult thing to resolve but in the longer term perhaps it should be looked at.”

The partnership has also recommended strengthening the ‘exceptional circumstances’ criteria that must be met before any major development in the AONB can be approved.

Mr West said he was unable to discuss any specific details around the local plan before publication of the latest draft – the ‘regulation 19’ version – this Friday, but assured members that the 2,600 comments received during the last consultation had been taken on board.

He said: “There are going to be changes that we are making to the regulation 19 version.

“There are what we would call more minor changes, which are those tweaks to improve policies largely based on the responses we have had.

“There are going to be some more significant alterations, particularly around site proposals.

“Obviously we are aware that when we consulted there was, as ever with these things, some ‘hot spots’ around the county, around which we are getting a lot of concern and a lot of objection.

“The Shropshire Hills is one of those, particularly around Church Stretton. We got a lot of concern about our proposals there.

“All I can say is that we have looked at them and we have reflected upon them, and you will be able to see how we have reacted on Friday.”