The Group considered the report of the Assistant Director of Development and Community Strategy regarding the progress on the development of a Settlement Hierarchy for Maidstone Borough.

A number of concerns were raised with regard to the accuracy of the data within the appendices to the report.  The Group were informed that there were issues of consistency with the data and that the Group were being asked to endorse the framework so that consultation with parishes can be developed further in order to ensure that the data and other relevant functional information imported into this framework is accurate.

Officers informed the Group that as a large proportion of the Maidstone Borough population live in the rural area, finding the optimal sustainable way that will help these rural areas is important.  Therefore, consulting with the rural population, together with parishes, was fundamental to understanding what they currently have and how they use it, and how best to make rural areas more sustainable.

Members felt it was important for them to feed into the consultation by providing accurate information to Officers to be included in the framework.

The Group requested Officers to ensure that once the consultation had been completed, the up-dated report and appendices be considered again by this Group.

RESOLVED TO RECOMMEND TO THE CABINET MEMBER FOR REGENERATION:

1.  That the proposed consultation methodology (as set out below) for developing a settlement strategy in order to inform the spatial distribution of development within Maidstone Borough be endorsed:-

i)  Local planning authorities need to determine the relative merits of settlements when deciding how and where to allocate development.  Characteristic data only provides data about what is available in terms of services: it does not provide any information as to how people use those services, employment or public transport.  People often do not use local services even where they exist, or prefer to use services in neighbouring settlements.

ii)  To truly understand the functionality, network and relationships between settlements, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding at a local level as to how settlements relate to each other. This can be achieved by complementing characteristic data with functional data, i.e. how people use settlements for employment and services and the extent to which they use available public transport.

iii)  Maidstone Borough Council has opted to take a pragmatic approach by tailoring the ‘traditional approach’ to factor in the role and function of settlements, their interdependencies and the need to provide for change over the Development Plan period.

2.  That the rural settlements audit data and its interpretation and analysis is further explored.

3.  That the sustainable development criteria as set out in the Bristol Accord are endorsed to inform the development of a settlement hierarchy and that environmental sustainability is a key determiner within the methodology and report of the hierarchy of settlement.

4.  That the proposed framework on settlement hierarchy (attached as Appendix 1 to the report of the Assistant Director of Development and Community Strategy) is used as a basis for discussion with Parish Councils, representative groups of the rural population and other relevant stakeholders, such as key infrastructure providers, to import correct data, is endorsed.