Victoria Road Rhyl

We have been instructed by our clients - NWPS Construction Ltd (a Rhyl based contractor) - to progress a proposal to develop land at the vacant Victoria Business Park Victoria Road, Rhyl Denbighshire.

Some basics about the proposed development are summarised below:

• 18 no apartments in a mix of 16 no two bedrooms and 2 no 1 bedroom unit on two and three floors
• Access from Vale Park into an undercroft parking and entry area.
• Contemporary, high quality and flood resilient design (Mccormick Architecture, Chester).
• High quality and  affordable housing to Design Quality Requirement standard.
• Contribution to Public Open Space in the Town via commuted sum. 

Your views on the scheme are now sought in order to inform and develop a planning application which we expect to  present to Denbighshire County Council early in 2018.  Your views are important - they help  the design team explore planning issues as they might affect you and deliver a better development.

Street View from Victoria Road looking south.  

As we build up towards the next stage of submitting a planning application at some point early in 2018. we want to ensure you views are given and considered before an application is formally lodged. 

We have made the draft planning application available to view here.

You can comment either in the box below or to the following emal address.  planningpublicity@gmail.com

All change in Planning Committee

Having only just absorbed, with anticipation and trepidation, the candidates nominated in the pending Local Government elections (04 May),  the Welsh Government has legislated changes to the Size and Composition of Planning Committees.  A strand of its Positive Planning programme.

The key (mandatory) elements that come into effect with newly composed Planning Committees from 04 May are:

• Planning committee can contain no fewer than 11 members and no more than 21 members, but no more than 50% of the authority members. 

• Where wards have more than one elected member, only one member of that ward may sit on the planning committee, in order to allow other ward members to perform the representative role for local community interests.

There are exemptions for National Parks and where Local Authorities are made up of  solely of multiple ward members (to maintain political balance).

Decisions made in committee’s which do not comply with the new Regulations will be open to challenge on validity grounds.   

  

Other changes to Local Government Standing Orders will come into force alongside which require a 50% quorum and prohibit the use of substitute members.  

Economic Growth - How much land might be needed

The Daily Post reports today the "game-changing" Conwy Economic Growth Strategy 2017-2027.  We rely on the press as we cant find it anywhere on the revamped Conwy website. 

The headline job creation (3500 jobs) figure fascinates us not least because its significantly higher than LDP aspiration (2350 over plan life to 2022) on which current allocations are based.  We are all for aspiration and growth and would be delighted if it were delivered.  Conwy would be much stronger, more prosperous with a more resilient economy if achieved.  

We've been here before of course and the vagaries of wider economic forces, out-commuting, the limited westward route of North Wales metro, skills gaps, workforce flexibility, competing neighbours, the known unknown of Brexit/European and public funding levels will all influence success to a lesser or greater degree.  Lets not forget too where to house  an enlarged workforce and  associated essential physical and social infrastructure to support economic growth.  Delivery of and sustaining this level of employment and other growth will be extremely challenging.   

For a bit of fun over lunch, we asked a quick question along the lines of "how much land might be needed to deliver 3500 new jobs".  Using Government benchmarks on employment density we can get some basic analysis.  We assume  3500 FTE jobs are created, if only to test the worst (or more appropriately best) case land requirement.  We came up with the the following as a crude measure:

700 jobs in retail/restaurant/hospitality:  (say 17.5m/FTE  =  1.225ha required)

700 jobs in B8 warehousing/storage:  (75m/FTE = 5.25ha) 

700 jobs in B1a offices (50m/FTE= 3.5ha)

350 in R+D:   (50m/FTE - 1.75ha)

350 in Small Business workspace (average 40m/FTE = 1.4ha) 

350 in leisure concert/arts type/indoor attraction venues (Average 150m/FTE - 5.25ha) 

350 in hotels - 5rooms @32m2 per room (160m2)/FTE =5.6 ha)

We discount the construction sector jobs as well as the potential tidal lagoon off Colwyn Bay. We haven't taken account of changes of use and redevelopment.  

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So our back of a cigarette packet calculation suggests 22ha or thereabout of floorspace alone is required as accommodation for 3500new FTE jobs.  Depending on mix and market that could vary wildly.  To get a land requirement figure we multiplied the floorspace requirement by 2.5  allowing for  access, parking, servicing, landscaping and the like.  

A raw figure therefore looks somewhere in the region of 55 hectares.  Add 20% for contingency and flexibility to provide a variety of sites?  66 ha then?

As a comparator, the LDP allocates 20ha over a longer period and has delivered nowhere near the level of new jobs it envisaged through development of allocations.

For those of you who know Llandudno, the area covered by Mostyn Champneys, Parc Llandudno and Asda combined is some 19 or so hectares. 

Its a not unreasonable guestimate therefore that sites equivalent to 3.5 of those there developments combined developments will be needed, ready and developable within 10 years to deliver the Strategy.  A massive challenge.  Its not so much as a challenge but maybe a near impossibility Strategy designed for failure unless there is a very real and immediate sea change in understanding the amount of land need to be facilitated to achieve it and the civic leadership and public buy in to support it.    

Elections on 04 May anyone?