The Royal Borough’s Cabinet will be asked on Thursday 23 June to approve a public consultation next month on a key planning document for South West Maidenhead. This major development area will bring much-needed new homes, community facilities, employment space and improved public access to green space.
South West Maidenhead will meet, in a managed way, a significant proportion of the Royal Borough’s future housing need, delivering a sustainable new urban extension as part of Maidenhead’s regeneration and guarding against unsupported piecemeal development well away from towns and villages in the green belt.
The area is allocated in the adopted Borough Local Plan, with a vision to provide a sustainable, high-quality and distinctive place where people will want to live and enjoy living. This includes around 2,600 homes, 30% being affordable, along with new primary and secondary schools, a local centre, employment space and green space for people and nature.
As the first stage in the planning process, the council’s Planning Policy team invited the community to three online events during spring 2022, to share thinking around key considerations and help inform production of a site-specific Supplementary Planning Document (SPD).
The SPD will provide more detailed advice around the policies already set in the Borough Local Plan to guide the development and determination of future planning applications. It will also help ensure development and the infrastructure needed to support it happen in a coordinated and comprehensive way.
Having considered initial public feedback, officers have produced the draft SPD document, shaped around the three key considerations of Sustainability and the Environment, Connectivity, and Community Needs. On Thursday, Cabinet will be asked to consider the draft and approve a six-week public consultation, starting early in July.
The draft contains an illustrative framework plan and design principles, setting out how the development will deliver a high quality, sustainable and coherent environment that is well integrated within the wider area, addresses climate change and delivers significant amounts of affordable housing and family homes across two distinct neighbourhoods, with a broadly even split between numbers of houses and flats.
The document reaffirms commitments to delivering a sustainable, net carbon zero development, including 10 per cent biodiversity net gain, a green/blue infrastructure network helping wildlife move across the site, a highly connected green spine running north-south through the site, retention of Rushington Copse and as many other trees as practically possible.
The vision is to open-up areas of green space for public access and improve connectivity for active travel, with improved pedestrian and cycle links across the SPD area, including to Braywick Park and Ockwells Park.
Adrien Waite, Head of Planning, said: “The scope and location of the South West Maidenhead development area provides an opportunity to help meet our borough’s considerable housing and other needs in a coordinated, comprehensive and sustainable way.
“The SPD is the next stage in the planning process, building upon high quality place-making work and adding more detailed guidance to the vision and policy already set in the Borough Local Plan. We would like to thank the community for helping us to crystallise our thinking around the key considerations, which we have reflected in drafting the document, and look forward to hearing further views from the public consultation.
“The SPD area contains parcels of land in multiple ownerships and it will help ensure various developers bring forward applications for high quality, coordinated and comprehensive development that is supported by the required infrastructure and meets community needs and aspirations around housing, community facilities, connectivity, sustainability and the environment.”
More information about South West Maidenhead is available at www.rbwm.gov.uk/SWMaidenhead-SPD