The campaign groups are swinging into action, and tourist bosses are looking on anxiously. This is what always happens when new developments are planned in the rolling green acres of South Lakeland in Cumbria.
The local council – often praised for its openness on planning issues – will soon conclude months of consultation on new land allocations.
Its initial proposals included hundreds of acres of new employment land, along with sites for 6,000 homes. Many of these sites are greenfield and, although outside the boundaries of the Lake District National Park, still considered sensitive and valuable.
A local newspaper’s (perhaps unscientific) poll of readers showed that 80% were opposed to building on greenfield sites. Residents’ groups are already preparing for battle at sites like the business park at Ratherheath (see panel), and around Kendal, where the local Civic Society says it thinks the town is big enough already.
A separate fight is looming over a Kendal site zoned for 300 homes but which objectors say is in a flood plain.
Richard Greenwood is the director of development at Cumbria Tourism. A former council planner who once worked for South Lakeland council, Greenwood understands the pressures on local authorities. But he also warns them not to let development plans trump other local needs. Tranquillity, landscape and good views are just as important, he says.
“We try to work with councils like South Lakeland, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a noise and a fuss when they propose something we don’t like. We’ve been watching its land allocation exercise – and we’ll be looking at it to ask what it does for views, landscapes, tranquillity and to protect those qualities inside and outside the park,” says Greenwood.
Until now, Cumbria Tourism has restricted itself to worries about inappropriate wind farm applications and occasional ill-placed road schemes, and to minimising the effect of large nuclear installations.
Greenwood says: “So far, South Lakeland council has stuck to clear planning rules about minimising impact and attaching new sites to built-up areas. It has ambitious targets, but I’ve got reasonable confidence in its planning system.”
He adds: “Local councils in Cumbria are fairly switched on. They understand the importance of tourism to the local economy, and they appreciate the need to cultivate the right kind of investment. They don’t want to allow things that would kill the fatted calf of tourism.”
Dan Hudson, development strategy manager for South Lakeland council, agrees, although he suspects some residents won’t believe him.
“Finding large, flat employment sites is very difficult – there aren’t very many site options. Given that we have a high-quality landscape in South Lakeland, the sites we are putting forward will be very controversial,” he says.
The council follows guidance from Cumbria county council, and its own landscape character assessment, in an effort to make sure new employment sites do not impinge on sensitive areas.
“We are conscious of the need to maintain the character of our landscape, and tranquillity is part of that. It may not be something explicit, but it is something we take into account,” says Hudson.
Most of the selected sites are close to major roads and urban areas and tranquillity was never an issue, the council insists.
“We can develop in ways that do not affect the tourism offer because the district contains urban and industrial areas that we can add to. And there are places where we’d simply tell developers that their plans are unacceptable,” says Hudson.
Local agents give South Lakeland council the benefit of the doubt. Peter Nicholson, director at Kendal-based Peill & Co, says: “The council does its best to find sites, although land allocations it has made in the past have been knocked back on appeal.
“Really, it has topography against it. Flat, accessible sites are very hard to find,” he adds.
Later this year, South Lakeland council will make a final decision on its land allocation strategy. But for now the big noise about tranquillity is likely to rumble on.
A LEP into the dark
While Cumbria’s new local enterprise partnership is now up and running, Lancashire has only this month got its act together.
Cumbria’s new LEP board, which met for the first time earlier this month, has launched a campaign to host one of the government’s 21 new enterprise zones.
A plan is being prepared, and an expression of interest about the enterprise zone has been sent to business secretary Vince Cable.
Meanwhile, Lancashire’s LEP plans have been blighted by disagreement between local councils.
Three overlapping rival bids were submitted last year and ill-feeling in the county shows no sign of easing. Lancashire county and Preston city councils are in more or less open warfare with Blackburn council, which opposed Preston’s Tithebarn retail regeneration and vetoed plans for county-wide LEP.
Amid embarrassment and pressure from government, last-ditch talks resulted in a compromise as Estates Gazette went to press. Ministers approved an LEP covering the Lancashire county council area together with Blackpool.
However, for now, Blackburn council will remain outside the LEP, and talks are set to continue.
A call to arms
In Cumbria, it seems that some developments improve the landscape, rather than ruin it.
Not far from South Lakeland, at Allerdale district, work will begin soon on a tourist-led revamp of a former arms dump.
Carlisle-based Nigel Catterson’s development consortium has been selected by Allerdale council and Cumbria county council to create a visitor attraction at the former 1,000-acre munitions depot at Broughton Moor in west Cumbria. Catterson’s Derwent Forest Developments Consortium plans a new green education centre on the former Ministry of Defence site.
Cumbria Tourism’s Richard Greenwood is supportive. “A holiday village with leisure elements is included, and there is plenty of scope for development here. Generally, we try to be champions for development, not opponents,” he said.
The proposals
A 43-acre site in Kendal is the centrepiece of South Lakeland district council’s strategic employment sites plan.
The plan – still in its early stages – suggests sites around the district situated close, for the most part, to existing development. For instance, around 16 acres is allocated at Burton Road, near Oxenholme railway station.
Two further sites at Canal Head, Ulverston, will provide another 15 acres, while almost 10 acres is zoned west of the town. Allocations could change after this spring’s consultation exercise.
Independent of the council’s strategy, but likely to feature in Cumbria’s planning debate, the Ratherheath Strategic Partnership is resubmitting plans for a £70m business park on a 37-acre greenfield site close to the A591. The partnership was formed by Stagecoach along with local firms McClures and Stonecraft Design.
Similar plans for a 420,000 sq ft development were rejected by South Lakeland council last year.
