2. Norwich

The Norwich urban area is at the top of the GNLP settlement hierarchy. As the most accessible and sustainable location in the area, Norwich benefits from a high level of accessibility to a broad range of local and sub-regional services and facilities. In this Local Plan, Norwich will retain that prime position and be promoted for a significant share of housing and economic development in the GNLP. The area within the city boundary is largely built up and no large-scale greenfield sites remain available to allocate. Therefore, Norwich’s potential for the delivery of new housing and economic development will be reliant on the use of previously developed land and premises, increasing densities and housing-led regeneration and renewal, particularly in the city centre.

Norwich has many assets like open spaces, green infrastructure and the river valleys of the Wensum and Yare. The landscape setting of Norwich and the proximity of the Broads are other considerations. All these assets will limit the scale and location of development in Norwich. The major heritage significance of parts of the city mean that particular care needs to be taken in planning, locating and designing new development.

1,885 homes were delivered in Norwich between the base date of 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2020. 5,254 new homes could potentially be built on sites with unimplemented planning permissions and allocations in existing local plans (as at 1st April 2020).  There are new allocations and uplift on existing allocations providing for 4,527 new homes. This gives a total deliverable housing commitment for Norwich equivalent to 11,666 homes. 

Although a relatively small number of completely new allocations are proposed, there is considerable potential to increase housing densities on previously identified sites; particularly in and adjoining the city centre (which will also be a focus for employment, retail, leisure, educational and cultural facilities).

The plan proposes a limited number of allocations for employment use and other uses carried forward from previous local plans: this includes three sites providing for the longer-term expansion of the University of East Anglia.