Sustainable Settlement Planning - Local Service Centres in the East Riding of Yorkshire  
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East Riding - Sustainable settlement planning

The Countryside Agency carried out research in 2003 on the role of rural settlements as service centres (Land Use Consultants/SERRL/Delow 2004).

Aims and objectives:
East Riding Council looked to develop a robust approach to the identification of such centres and to devise appropriate policies to support their role.

This work will form part of the evidence base that will underpin the Council’s Local Development Framework. In particular, the Council wishes to understand in detail the role and function of the East Riding of Yorkshire’s various smaller rural settlements. 

The key objectives were:

  • To provide practically based evidence that can have widespread application across the local authority
  • To gather evidence to inform policies in the forthcoming East Riding Local Development Documents.            

Key findings and Recommendations 
What the project has shown is that the role of local service centre function provided by the settlements in the study area varies greatly and, generally, none act as fully functioning service centres. This illustrates the ability of places and people to defy how planning assumes they will function and the research concludes that the model of a local service centre fails to embrace the complexity and diversity of the study area. The rural settlements rely heavily on larger settlements for jobs and services and travel patterns are of long distances and predominantly car-based.

The study recommends that to best improve the sustainability of the area concerned planning should use its influence to build on the existing functional strengths of the rural settlements and secure additional affordable housing where it would have the most positive impact. A policy framework is set out whereby a Smaller Settlements DPD in the LDF refines policies in the Core Strategy. The DPD should articulate a vision and objectives for the smaller settlements, identifying where limited development can make the greatest contribution to sustainability.

Alongside the final report for the East Riding study, Land Use Consultants also produced a practical guide to building and using an evidence base entitled Planning for Rural Settlements.