The Growth Strategy

To ensure sustainable development, minimise carbon emissions, promote strong, resilient, inclusive and vibrant communities and meet other Government requirements set out in the NPPF, the strategy for the location of growth:

1. Maximises brownfield development and regeneration opportunities, which are mainly in Norwich. The brownfield/greenfield split for new homes in the plan is around 22%/78%;
2. Broadly follows the settlement hierarchy set out in policy 1 (the Norwich urban area; main towns; key service centres and village clusters) in terms of scales of growth as this reflects access to services and jobs;
3. Focusses most of the growth in locations with the best access to jobs, services and existing and planned infrastructure in and around the Norwich urban area and the Cambridge Norwich Tech corridor;
4. Focusses reasonable levels of growth in the main towns, key service centres and village clusters to support a vibrant rural economy. The approach to village clusters is innovative. It  reflects the way people access services in rural areas and enhances social sustainability by promoting appropriate growth in smaller villages. It will support local services, whilst at the same time protecting the character of the villages.
5. Allocates strategic scale housing sites (1,000 dwellings +) in accessible locations;
6. Allocates a significant number of medium scale and smaller scale sites in the urban area, towns and villages, providing a balanced range of site types to allow for choice, assist delivery and allow smaller scale developers and builders into the market. Overall, 12% of the homes allocated through the plan are on sites of no larger than 1 hectare, meeting national requirements⁶². More small-scale housing developments will be provided by policy 7.5 and through windfall development;
7. Sets a minimum allocation size of 12-15 dwellings to ensure that a readily deliverable amount of affordable housing is provided on all allocated sites.