Evidence, data and monitoring
Bradford Growth Assessment
In preparing the Local Plan, Bradford Metropolitan District Council (BMDC) have assessed the District's housing needs over the period to 2030. To meet this identified housing need in full, the use of Green Belt land will also be required in addition to reusing previously developed land within the existing urban area.
In order to inform the broad choices for green belt change in the Core Strategy and to start preliminary testing of potential sites in advance of the Allocations DPD, the Council commissioned Broadway Malyan to undertake a Growth Assessment for the Bradford District.
The aim of the study is to inform the Local Plan on the most appropriate and sustainable locations for the development of urban extensions and green belt releases where new housing development may be focussed.
The Growth Assessment comprises two distinct elements:
- Directions for Growth
- Sustainability Testing of potential Green Belt Sites
Element one uses a specific range of criteria to map constraints in the 500M zone around each settlement. Areas of relatively unconstrained land are therefore identified and mapped.
This first stage also includes analysis of the current environmental, economic and social characteristics of each settlement to help determine their suitability for accommodating growth.
Element two takes this research a stage further. It subjects the parcels of land identified within element one, together with some of the green belt sites within the SHLAA, to a series of environmental, social and economic sustainability testing criteria, thereby providing broad commentary on the potential (or not) of the land parcels to accommodate future growth.
It is important to stress that the Growth Assessment is not a policy document, does not form part of the Local Plan and does not allocate sites. It identifies a range of locations which will need to be subject to much more detailed analysis as part of the forthcoming work on the Allocations DPD. The appearance of an area within the document therefore does not necessarily indicate that that area will be identified by the Council in the future for development.
The study is however, one of the documents which helped inform the broad decisions which the Local Planning Authority has made in its Core Strategy and will also inform decisions at a later date in the Allocations Development Plan Document.
The following documents are in Adobe Acrobat format