Heritage Sensitivity Assessment The Council is seeking to appoint consultants to undertake a Heritage Sensitivity Assessment to support the preparation of the Uttlesford Local Plan

Heritage Sensitivity Assessment

The Council is seeking to appoint consultants to undertake a Heritage Sensitivity Assessment to support the preparation of the Uttlesford Local Plan.

Following withdrawal of the 2018 Submission Local Plan from the examination process in early 2020, the Council is at the early stages of preparing a new Local Plan.

The Council commenced work on the Issues and Options stage in October 2020 and community engagement on this stage is ongoing until mid-April 2021. The Council is aiming to consult on the draft Plan (Preferred Options) in March 2022 and Pre-Submission in March 2023 and submit the plan for examination in August 2023.

The Strategy of the withdrawn local plan centred on the allocation of three garden communities. One of the recommendations from the Inspectors was that the Council would need to allocate more small and medium sized sites to bolster supply and provide flexibility and choice. The Inspectors also identified landscape and heritage constraints in relation to the garden communities that had not been satisfactorily addressed, in particular at North Uttlesford GC.

The council is therefore commissioning a series of evidence base documents to help it development vision, strategy, policies and allocations. There is a strong likelihood that this will include allocations in the towns and villages. The council is committed to delivering developments of the highest quality and in the most sustainable locations. Therefore, the Council is seeking evidence of the sensitivity of the heritage to development around settlements