The reports and appraisals on this page form part of the evidence base to the Council’s Local Plan.
Local plan viability appraisal
The Local plan viability appraisal assesses the policy standards and requirements proposed in Preferred options (2012).
It also considers the impact of policy on the Community infrastructure levy (CIL) as advised by the National planning policy framework. The appraisal was commissioned by the Council from GVA consultants.
It was revised and republished in November 2015. This was due to the Potential sites consultation, other aspects of the Local plan and the Preliminary draft charging schedule for CIL being released.
Settlement hierarchy
The Settlement hierarchy methodology and results reports, look at the evidence on the provision of services and facilities across Calderdale and ease of community access.
They set out the existing settlement hierarchy and relative sustainability of the different settlements and areas across Calderdale. There were two consultations (2008), release of the final reports (2009) and report updates (2013):
Update reports: October 2013
Final reports: November 2009
Second consultation: January 2009
Initial consultation: June 2008
The initial consultation consisted of a:
- consultation exercise on the proposed methodology with selected bodies;
- publically available questionnaires, including through the Council's Talkback Summer 2008 issue, on which services and facilities are considered essential.
Spatial-atlas
The Spatial atlas report highlights the main issues and challenges that exist in Calderdale and is a reference document for the development of the Local plan.
It uses maps to bring together key geographic information and show how Calderdale places function and inter-relate.
It will be updated as required, to ensure that any future strategies and planning polices are effective.
The Planning and compulsory purchase act 2004 requires local authorities to base the future of its local places and spaces, including visions for an area, on sound evidence of its social, economic and environmental characteristics.
Sustainability appraisal (incorporating the Strategic environmental assessment)
The Sustainability appraisal (SA) identifies the most significant, social, economic and environmental impacts of a planning document, throughout its preparation. This is so decisions agree with the objectives of sustainable development.
The first stage of preparing a SA report, is a scoping report:
It includes:
- identifying other relevant policies, plans, programmes, and objectives;
- collecting baseline information;
- identifying sustainability issues and problems;
- developing the sustainability appraisal framework; and
- consulting on the scope of the sustainability appraisal.
Although this scoping report replaces the SA work carried out on the Local development framework, the information and analysis from the previous version are included where relevant. These are some of the earlier work the Local development framework SA:
Other evidence
As well as evidence produced specifically for the Local plan, there are other sources of data or evidence available.
This includes biodiversity data, to find out more about this, visit: Natural England.
Another evidence source is the replacement for Calderdale's Sustainable community strategy. For more about this, read: