Opportunities
- Inspire and encourage high quality design in new developments, reinforcing Uttlesford’s unique character, landscape and heritage
- Encourage provision of safe, attractive walking and cycling routes
- Future-proof new developments so that they can adapt to changing lifestyles, technologies, and ways of travelling
- Ensure new developments address climate change
- Encourage PV & solar panels, EV charging points, and green energy used
- Mitigate flooding risk and manage water to protect chalk streams through landscaping measures such as attenuation ponds and Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS)
- Ensure well-planned public open spaces and rights of way
- Improve health and wellbeing for all
- Use native planting to increase biodiversity, encourage wildlife and add aesthetic value
Issues and challenges
- Growing population has put a strain on services and infrastructure eg schools, healthcare, roads
- No Local Plan in place to guide development
- Currently difficult to encourage volume housebuilders and developers to deviate from their standard house types and include architectural details that are more specific to Uttlesford
- Often new development is sprawling and low-density, and does not include uses other than residential
- Often new development is not integrated well into the rest of the town/village or the landscape
- Lack of safe space for cycling on roads
- Lack of social spaces and places of activity for young people
- Climate change
- Flooding risk and need for careful water management to protect chalk streams
- Open spaces and play space often poorly sited in new developments and not well integrated into the design