A shared vision for creating a thriving, sustainable new settlement in South Worcestershire.

The successful development of a new settlement at Worcestershire Parkway will require significant collaboration over several years between the public and private sectors, as well as between multiple private organisations. This collaboration has been underway for several years already. The seven main landowners and promoters, whose holdings combine to create the new settlement, meet monthly and also meet regularly as a group with the South Worcestershire Development Plan Review team from the South Worcestershire Councils. More recently, to prepare for this first private-led public consultation in October 2023, the combined landowners’ communications teams have been meeting weekly to ensure that consultation and engagement activities are consistent and appropriate. The work of the responsible public and private entities, planned, co-ordinated and recorded across these various groups and meetings, will dictate the continued consistency and appropriateness of communications throughout the planning and delivery of the new settlement.

The combined landowners are working together to ensure their plans align with the Council’s vision set out in the local plan, which will be the subject of independent examination during 2024. One of the key issues for the examination will be whether the proposals are deliverable. The landowners are working together and with the Councils to ensure the local plan’s evidence base is sound, and this work will continue right up to the examination. At the same time, each of the landowner’s individual masterplans will evolve as more technical data is gathered and their teams prepare all appropriate assessments, including the cumulative impacts of all the proposals together. Experience shows that preparing and submitting applications for major allocations is an important way of demonstrating deliverability. That is why the landowners are working towards submission of outline applications and carrying out this public consultation. Any applications will be determined in the usual way including consultation with statutory bodies and other stakeholders, for instance County and National Highways, to ensure appropriate mitigation is agreed to minimise impacts and secure benefits. It will then be for Wychavon District Council’s planning committee to determine whether and when these applications are approved, most likely once the local plan is adopted. Given the scale of the project, it is expected that a delivery programme and construction management plans for each development phase will be required to ensure coherence and provide the necessary physical, social and green infrastructure to support each phase and parcel of development.

The combined landowners anticipate that the majority of infrastructure required for the new settlement will be funded from the proceeds of development either directly or funded through legal agreements with the District and County Councils. The involvement of Homes England, as a landowner, will provide a catalyst for early development of the town centre and may assist in securing external funding for initial phases of infrastructure. Where items of infrastructure are serving a wider population than the new settlement, the combined landowners anticipate providing a proportionate and justified contribution.

The objective of stakeholder engagement and public consultation around the proposed new settlement is to understand how the proposals can help meet the needs of both existing and future communities in the South Worcestershire area. No one knows an area better than the people who live and work there. Therefore, community engagement should help identify how the proposals can solve current challenges, protect valued assets, and deliver benefits for both the existing and future communities in and around the new settlement.

The South Worcestershire Development Plan Review team has set out a Vision for the new settlement, and prepared a concept plan and a draft Spatial Framework. This is a ‘concept’ and therefore intended to be high level and with some flexibility. As detailed proposals are worked up, these may differ in some respects from that concept but remain true to the principles set out in draft policy, and of course subject to any changes that might come about through the examination process. Any differences would of course be subject through the application process to consideration by the Councils as to their acceptability.