Green infrastructure

Green Infrastructure Provision in New Housing Developments

The Central Lancashire Core Strategy highlights the importance of ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to access sport, recreation and open space facilities, including children's play.

The Council is required to produce minimum local standards for provision of such facilities, based on quantitative needs, accessibility and qualitative factors and seek developer contributions. This is either in the form of new provision or off site provision or improvement,  where new development would result in a shortfall in provision.

Open spaces and playing pitch assessments

Open space and playing pitch assessments have been produced jointly with South Ribble and Chorley Council's, to provide up-to-date information on local needs and define standards required in development.

Following these assessments, a joint Open Space and Playing Pitch SPD (PDF) [330KB] has been produced alongside South Ribble and Chorley Councils and adopted in September 2014. 

Setting specific standards

To ensure that new housing development delivers appropriate green infrastructure, the Council has set out specific standards in line with the evidence provided in these studies and the Supplementary Planning Document, which are set out in Policy HS3.

Policy HS3 is also based on Central Lancashire Core Strategy Policies 18 (Green Infrastructure) and 24 (Sport and Recreation) and is in keeping with the National Planning Policy Framework.

The key objectives of this policy are:

• i. To ensure the open space, sport and recreation needs generated by new housing development are met.
• ii. To ensure new housing development does not result in deficiencies in the amount and availability of open space, sport and recreational facilities.
• iii. To increase leisure opportunities for young people.

Policy HS3 - Green Infrastructure in New Housing Developments

All new residential development resulting in a net gain of dwellings will be required to provide sufficient public open space to meet the recreational needs of the development, in accordance with the standards set out below:

Residential developments will be required to provide new green corridors where considered appropriate.