Environment Minister Jane Davidson with Bob Hutchings OBE, Group Chair of Seren, and Darrell Bolton, Corporate Director of Fairlake at the Mariners Quay sustainable housing development in Newport.
Updated national planning policy with an increased focus on tackling climate change has been unveiled by Environment Minister Jane Davidson at the Royal Town Planning Institute conference in City Hall, Cardiff.
The Minister launched the second edition of Planning Policy Wales which highlights the important role the planning system has to play in ensuring a sustainable future for Wales
The launch followed the Minister’s visit to a sustainable housing development in Newport earlier in the day which will offer residents low energy bills estimated at less than £5 a week.
Planning Policy Wales provides the strategic policy framework for local planning authorities to use when preparing development plans and determining applications for planning permission.
Speaking about Planning Policy Wales, the Environment Minister said:
“The main driver for this consolidated version of Planning Policy Wales is to further embed the need to tackle climate change into the planning system. Climate change is one of the most serious global threats facing us today. As a society we must take action to minimise the causes of global climate change as well as understand and deal with the consequences of inevitable change.
“Climate change will have potentially profound environmental, economic and social justice implications and failure to address it will make planning for sustainable development impossible. As a small industrialised nation, Wales has the opportunity to lead the way in tackling climate change, and the planning system must play its part.”
This new edition of Planning Policy Wales includes all the policy updates that have been issued since 2002 in the form of Ministerial Interim Planning Policy Statements (MIPPS). It also reflects changes to facts, law, policies and other documents referred to in the original Planning Policy Wales and in the various MIPPS.
Mariners Quay, the sustainable housing development on Newport’s river front that the Minister visited earlier in the day is being built to meet Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
The housing has been designed with energy efficiency at the forefront. Residents can expect energy bills of less than £5 a week – around a quarter of the energy bills of comparable homes built to current building regulations.
The development will provide highly insulated homes incorporating heat recovery systems, gas fired central heating plants, a biomass boiler, a rainwater harvesting system and photo voltaic cells.
Speaking about the visit, the Minister said:
“I’m delighted to have had the chance to visit Mariners Quay. This is exactly the type of high quality and sustainable development, on brownfield land, that Planning Policy Wales is intended to deliver”.
Mariners Quay is a partnership between Newport City Council, Newport Unlimited, Leadbitter the Seren Group and the Welsh Assembly Government. The £17m scheme will provide 101 homes along Newport’s riverfront and properties will include a mix of affordable homes for rent and for sale.
