Why have a Sustainability Checklist for Developments?
- Why have a Sustainability Checklist for Developments in Brighton & Hove?
- Why adjust the South East Checklist to suit Brighton & Hove’s needs?
Why have a Sustainability Checklist for Developments in Brighton & Hove?
In the late 1990’s, developers and local authorities in the UK found that there was an increasing emphasis on the sustainability of developments, but that there was no clear guidance on which issues should be addressed and what common standards should be achieved. To address these issues, in 2001/2 the DTI/Partners in Technology programme funded BRE to work with a range of experts to produce a National Sustainability Checklist for Developments.
The South East Development Agency (SEEDA) felt that a Checklist specifically tailored to policy priorities and needs of the region would be a more focused solution. Following recommendations and requests by, amongst others, the Sustainable Buildings Task Group and the Egan Review (see Endorsements), ODPM and WWF funded the roll out of regionally tailored Sustainability Checklists for each of the other English regions to fit their particular needs, priorities and policy requirements.
In 2004, Brighton & Hove adopted its own sustainability checklist (SPGBH 21). While informed in some ways by regional developments, the format of the award-winning Brighton & Hove version was not easy to monitor. The re-launch of the South East Checklist as an online tool in early 2007 and the development of the Sustainable Building Design Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) offered the Local Planning Authority not only the opportunity to address the monitoring issue but to make the checklist more user-friendly and responsive to the fast changing nature of sustainable development practices and policy.
Why adjust the South East Checklist to suit Brighton & Hove’s needs?
Like other local authorities in the UK, Brighton & Hove is required to produce its own Local Development Framework (LDF), informed by a Strategic Environmental Assessment/Sustainability Appraisal. This requirement is laid at the local level in recognition that the particular context of each local authority area differs somewhat.
LDFs must correlate with the South East Plan (SEP) (South East Plan) meaning, in principle, that key issues (and therefore questions) contained in the South East Checklist remain the same. Supporting this principle and aiming to allow for future comparisons with other regional cities/districts, the tailoring of the South East Checklist to Brighton & Hove’s needs sought to keep the structure of the regional checklist while incorporating local policy requirements.
Additionally, the tailoring process resulted in the incorporation of a new feature: a planning-based monitoring system that would allow the Local Planning Authority to assess the delivery of sustainable development via the planning system. The monitoring system developed for Brighton & Hove reports on checklists submitted as part of planning applications. Qualitative and quantitative information gathered via the Brighton & Hove checklist inform the Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) and relevant policy reviews.