Thresholds Triggering Retail Impact Assessments - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
Grŵp agored
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Wedi dechrau - Gorffenaf 2012
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Gweithgaredd diwethaf - May
Thresholds Triggering Retail Impact Assessments
We are currently drafting a policy in our Delivery and Site Allocations DPD to set thresholds indicating when a retail impact assessment is required for retail schemes not in designated centres (following the PPS4 guidance that LDFs should do this if they don’t want to stick with the national standard 2,500m2 threshold). I was wondering if anyone had drafted up any policies setting such thresholds yet? We are envisaging a tiered approach, so that proposals of varying sizes can be assessed for their impact on different typologies and sizes of centre, depending on what degree of impact they are likely to have. We are also thinking of using a distance threshold to judge which town centre a proposal should be assessed against regarding impact. So it would be useful to know if anyone has tried this already, how they drafted the policy and what issues they came up against. There seems to be a lack of guidance or best practice in this area, so any help/advice would be really helpful!
David Bassetlaw have done something on this for there recently submitted Core Strategy. I assume it is on their website. However, I'm not convinced that their approach would work in a more active retail market. I'm also looking at this and I'm the process of pulling together a methodology. It's not been signed off yet so I can't send a copy around. Basically I've guestimated a percentage of the avaliable expenditure that might start to cause problems if it was drawn away from the centre. I've then converted this expenditure figure into a floorspace figure using average sales densities. Obviously you can use a different percentage for different types of centres and goods. If anybody has a different way of doing things let me know. I'll try and post our methodology up here when able. Cheers Tom
I'm working in the same area (where authorities are working jointly) as Tom and having to draw up a statement that indicates the recommended approach the authorities in the area would take. Tom's methodology is valuable to establish what level a trigger might be set. In practice the trigger point is to prompt pre-application discussions, consequently there may be vulnerable centres where you would be more likely to demand an assessment for smaller stores. Bear in mind this is to establish a trigger, so a more complex approach may not be necessary. Tom's methodolody would serve to justify the chosen trigger, it's not a determinant of impact in itself, so needs to be precautionary. I do know of authorities which have set a trigger simply to catch stores of certain formats. NB PPS4 indicates that the areas within which these triggers could apply - this should establish where more onerous triggers (than the national one) would apply, rather than where none would apply.