Issue - meetings

Maidstone Town Centre - Promotion of Opportunity Areas

Meeting: 09/01/2018 - Strategic Planning, Sustainability and Transportation Committee (Item 129)

129 Maidstone Town Centre - Regeneration Opportunity Areas

Minutes:

Mrs Sarah Lee, the Principal Planning Officer – Strategic Planning, presented a report on Maidstone Town Centre – Regeneration Opportunity Areas to the Committee.

 

Mrs Lee highlighted to the Committee that:

 

·  The output of the project would be a Maidstone Town Centre Opportunity Areas Brochure, which would focus on design guidance, potential uses of the opportunity areas and the capacity of them. This brochure would be pivotal in engaging with developers and marketing the Town Centre in general and the opportunity areas in particular.

 

·  An internal officer steering group had been set up to facilitate the initial work and oversee the project as a whole. The steering group had divided the project into areas that would be best suited to in-house resources and areas that would require external specialists. The external skills required were urban design, property economics and graphics, and potentially heritage and transportation.

 

·  The costs for this project would be the subject of a funding bid to the DCLG for its Planning Delivery Fund. If the bid was unsuccessful then alternative funding options would need to be explored.

 

·  This project displayed the Council’s proactive approach to bringing forward brownfield sites for development in the Town Centre.

 

·  A future report would be brought to this Committee once the draft planning guidance had been prepared and would provide an update on wider aspects of the project.

 

·  In the longer term, this project could provide evidence of development deliverability for the Local Plan Review.

 

The Committee advised that the scope for leisure and community facilities should be included in the project brief and Officers confirmed that they would be.

 

It was noted that the Committee were encouraged by the project and excited about delivering these opportunity areas to an outcome. 

 

RESOLVED: That the project scope set out in Section 1 of the report and the opportunity areas listed in paragraph 1.3 be agreed.