Planning principles
Our planning policy statement updates ‘Planning tomorrow’s countryside’ and sets out our planning principles for the countryside.
Our approach to positive planning in the countryside can be expressed through six principles for more ambitious and innovative plans and policies.
- Principle One. Encourage high quality applications and assess them on the basis of are they good enough to approve?, rather than are they bad enough to refuse?
- Principles Two. Integrate policies so that plans and the development plan process look first for solutions which bring social, economic and environmental benefits, and then for solutions where unavoidable adverse impacts are mitigated or compensated: there should always be a net gain and no significant losses from development.
- Principle Three. Respect the character of all landscapes, and protect and enhance the best.
- Principle Four. Consider what development is needed to sustain the countryside as well as where it should go.
- Principle Five. Use positive objectives as the basis of planning; not 'predict and provide'
- Principle Six. Give a positive role to communities and community planning.
Position Statements
