St Edmundsbury Core Strategy (December 2010)

Policy CS4 - Settlement Hierarchy and IdentityRural Areas4.49 Whilst the two towns of Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill will provide the mainfocus for large scale growth in the borough, a high proportion of the new housingand employment development in the borough will be located in the rural areas, inthose villages which have a range of services and facilities to meet local needs.4.50 Borough wide local services and facilities surveys are undertaken annuallywith the last one completed in spring 2009. These surveys assess the servicesavailable to people to help the council to identify those settlements that should bethe focus of development, as they have access to the widest range of services andwill reduce the need to rely on the car.4.51 The additional growth in the rural areas will be dependent upon the capacityof the natural and built environment to accommodate development withoutunacceptable environmental harm being caused, and the ability of existing orplanned infrastructure to cope with the development.4.52 The Core Strategy identifies three hierarchies of settlement in the rural areawhere development will normally be acceptable;Key Service Centres4.53 The five villages identified as Key Service Centres generally have a widerange of services as well as local employment provision. New housingdevelopments of between 20 and 70 houses and some additional jobs are alreadyplanned in some of these settlements. These settlements meet the criteria set outin The East of England Plan for the designation of Key Service Centres as follows:“Large villages with a good level of services, which might include:a primary school within the settlement and a secondary school within thesettlement or easily accessible by public transport;primary health care facilities;a range of retail and service provision capable of meeting day-to-day needs,in particular for convenience shopping;local employment opportunities; andfrequent public transport to higher order settlements.”4.54 The Key Service Centres will be the main focus for additional homes, jobsand community facilities outside of Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill. However, thescale of growth in the individual settlements will be dependent upon the localenvironmental and infrastructure capacity of the settlement concerned. This is amatter that will be addressed through the more detailed work of the Rural SiteAllocations Development Plan Document and we will seek to involve the localcommunities in determining the most appropriate levels of growth and thelocations for that development.Local Service Centres4.55 In order to improve the sustainability of development in the rural areas, weare designating a category of village titled “Local Service Centre”. These will bevillages that have at least three of the following:a primary school;44