The Provision and Funding of Open Space Through Development Supplementary Planning Guidance
Mid Devon District Council
The Mid Devon Local Plan was adopted in 2006, and this supplementary planning guidance (SPG) was adopted in 2007 replacing the previously Supplementary Planning Guidance of 2000.
The SPD is aimed at ensuring the provision and improvement of open spaces in the district through new development.
Mid Devon is a rural district with over two thirds of its development sites have fewer than 25 houses. The difficulty of provision of public open space on small sites was resulting the majority of development making no provision, resulting in deficiencies. In order to ensure that new development built in the district contributed to providing and improving open space, a single dwelling threshold for contributions has been adopted in the SDP. This policy has been defended successfully at appeal and the Local Plan policy at Inquiry.
The strength of the SPG is that it divides the district into 27 catchment areas based around village and town centres. These catchments are small enough for contributions to be related to the development, but large enough to make sure the pooled contributions are large enough to fund new provision and improvements.
The SPG is strengthened by local needs surveys supporting deficiencies in provision and identifying improvement schemes and new provision. An open space and play strategy has also been developed.
To date over 600 developments have been eligible to make contributions through S106 Agreements or unilateral undertakings. This has resulted in contributions of about £1.2 million with further funding due when a number of developments commence. One hundred projects have been funded with about £600,000. A significant number of new projects are in the pipeline.
The SPD is at:
 http://www.middevon.gov.uk/media/pdf/g/a/Open_Space_SPD.pdf (681kb)
The Sustainability Appraisal is at:
http://www.middevon.gov.uk/media/pdf/7/a/Environmental_Assessment_SPD.pdf(197kb)
For further information on the Mid Devon SPG, contact David Scott dscott@middevon.gov.uk
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