Achieving high quality, well-designed places is a critical part of place making and an integral component of climate change and the city council’s journey to net zero and the health and well-being agendas.

Good design means delivering high quality and sustainable places. In order to be successful and achieve this, the design of new development needs to respond positively to local distinctiveness, have active frontages and encourage residents to cycle and walk through the development, as well as providing strong connections to existing communities, with access to public transport links whilst enhancing the natural environment and addressing the challenges of climate change and overheating.

The NPPF requires the Plan to set out a clear design vision and expectations so that applicants have as much certainty as possible as to how the council expects them to approach the key issues of design when developing their schemes and what therefore is likely to be acceptable.

The Plan should also be clear in setting out requirements for community consultation and other detailed design matters to provide guidance for developers.

The city council will require development of a high quality, which respects and enhances the district’s varied local character and contributes positively to public realm, landscape and townscape, with strong permeability and connectivity to facilitate active travel, in order to create sustainable communities. Whilst this section of the Local Plan includes a number of policies for achieving high quality, well-designed places and living well, this topic crosses over with a number of other policies/topics which is why it is important that the Plan is read as a whole.

In 2021 the Council commissioned Design South East to run a series of workshops to inform the consideration of design issues in the emerging local plan. 

Workshop 1 focused on how well design issues are addressed currently by the existing design policies in the local plan and other documents such as Supplementary Planning Documents and what opportunities exist to enhance how this important matter is dealt with in the context of the new local plan.

Workshop 2 focused on Winchester Town itself and was based on themes including transport, green/recreation/urban spaces, design of public spaces, opportunities for improvement of and access to facilities. Attendees were asked to identify on plans of the city, areas where there was opportunity for development and enhancement, to show how people moved around the city and whether connections could be improved. The final exercise focused on open space and public realm, asking participants whether there were opportunities for more open spaces and what improvements could be made to existing areas.

Workshop 3 focused on the rural villages and market towns. At this workshop an online poll was taken at the beginning and the results could be viewed live by the attendees at the workshop. Attendees were asked to consider and identify well designed places within their villages or areas. Photos were submitted by attendees to show well designed features of good developments at the workshop. The attendees were then asked to rate the quality of developments within their areas looking at what made them successful and not successful. The final exercise asked attendees to consider things they like or disliked in their areas and to consider the future of their place and how they would like it to be in 20 years’ time.

The results of the workshops were documented in three reports and discussed at the Councils Local Plan Action Group meeting of March 2022.

Please find a link to the High Quality well-designed Places and Living Well topic here. ^{(pdf, 4.1mb)}

The full Regulation 18 draft Local Plan is available in the box below.

Please use the following link to view the Regulation 18 draft Local Plan ^{(pdf, 24.7mb)}