Creating locally tailored versions
The Checklist reflects emerging RSS policy (which legislatively forms part of local planning policy) and the Regional Sustainable Development Framework (RSDF). It provides consistency for developers across the West Midlands. For this reason, local authorities are encouraged to use the Checklist to inform their own local policy development and/or draw up a schedule of the key questions within the Checklist that they would like developers and applicants to address for any scheme as part of a scoping and early pre-application discussion.
The Checklist reflects emerging RSS policy (which legislatively forms part of local planning policy) and the Regional Sustainable Development Framework (RSDF). It provides consistency for developers across the West Midlands.
For this reason, local authorities are encouraged to use the Checklist to inform their own local policy development and/or draw up a schedule of the key questions within the Checklist that they would like developers and applicants to address for any scheme as part of a scoping and early pre-application discussion.
Many questions do not have set minimum standards as this has been left to local authorities to determine. Local authorities are encouraged to set minimum standards which reflect their local context and these should ideally be equivalent to or more stringent than the “good” target set in the Checklist. Where there is no local authority policy to set a minimum standard then the Checklist ‘good’ target standard should be used.
Locally significant issues may arise as part of the SA/SEA process. Such issues must be covered by policies in either local, regional or national planning policy, otherwise the local checklist will be formulating new policy – there is then no statutory basis for that question to be considered in the planning process. Remember, the Checklist should be used to assess the sustainability of schemes against regional and local policy, not the Checklist itself.
Where Core Strategy (CS) and Local Development Framework (LDF) policies have yet to be determined and agreed, the Checklist can be used to help draft and refine local policy alongside the SEA/SA process. The Checklist can also be used as a ‘safety net’ to assess the sustainability of new development scheme proposals in the absence of formally adopted and approved CS and LDF policies because it is based on Regional Policy and the RSDF.