Dec 2010 - South Worcestershire Development Plan

SOUTH WORCESTERSHIRE ANNUAL MONITORING REPORT 2010395.0 DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY5.1 The SWDP Vision reflects Sustainable Community Strategy prioritiesfor the county and the three districts/city alike. This means there ismuch overlap with the Local Area Agreement and the performancemonitoring undertaken on a corporate basis by all local authorities.5.2 Whilst the SWDP has most direct influence on where and howdevelopment takes place, it is also about improving quality of life – anoutcome that is less tangible and therefore difficult to measure. Infuture editions, the AMR will include data from the three councils’ placesurveys as a proxy measure to provide a baseline position on‘liveability’. This will provide the levels of satisfaction across the SouthWorcestershire Area as a place to live.Distribution of Housing Development5.3 A potential marker of the emerging SWDP’s effectiveness is thepercentage of development at the main urban centres. Targets willeventually be located in the monitoring framework of the SWDP foreach element of the defined settlement hierarchy. Currently the threeadopted local plans set out the development strategy and specificallythe location of new housing development across South Worcestershire.All three authorities state that development will be directed to the mostsustainable locations. This will be sequentially determined and brieflyreads as follows:• The principal urban areas of Worcester, Malvern Evesham andDroitwich;• Towns of Pershore, Tenbury Wells and Upton upon Severn;• Rural villages as per rural settlement hierarchies; and• Development in the open countryside is controlled. Developmentis limited to those exceptions established in the adopted localplans