Falkirk Council use Building with Nature Standards to support the drafting of supplementary guidance
Building with Nature are supporting local authorities in responding to the Public Health, Climate and Ecological Emergencies by providing a clear framework of green infrastructure Standards for policy makers and development management teams. Multiple benefits for people and wildlife can be achieved through improvements to green infrastructure (health and wellbeing, urban cooling, reducing flood risk, supporting nature’s recovery network and biodiversity enhancement), and Building with Nature are making our Standards freely available for local authorities to use to secure high-quality green infrastructure in development. Building with Nature want to support local authorities to ‘raise the bar’ for the quality of green infrastructure coming forward and the Building with Nature Standards clearly define high-quality for policy makers and offer practical actions for industry.
Andrew McNair, Planning Officer explains how Falkirk Council utilised the Building with Nature approach in the writing of its draft supplementary guidance for green infrastructure and new development, to help deliver good quality green infrastructure.
“ In Falkirk Council area, we are blessed with a rich diversity of green and blue spaces from the impressive Helix featuring the world famous ‘Kelpies’ sculpture to river corridors, public parks, woodlands, active travel routes and key heritage assets such as the Antione Wall World Heritage Site and Forth & Clyde and Union Canals. We are also home to Forth Valley Hospital and Larbert Woods, which won the Landscape Institute Building with Nature Award in 2020 and demonstrates how linked natural spaces can be used creatively in preventative and therapeutic health care. Our area also won Britain's Best Walking Neighbourhood in 2019 following a nationwide public vote.
Collectively known as ‘green infrastructure’, green and blue spaces will play an important and positive role not just in the post-covid health recovery but also tackling the climate change and biodiversity emergency.
At Falkirk Council, we recently published draft supplementary guidance (SG05 - Green Infrastructure and New Development) to help applicants create well designed green infrastructure in new developments and achieve multiple sustainability benefits in the process. SG05 draws from local development plan policy, existing guidance and concepts in GI, and it was produced following a workshop in Autumn 2019 with representatives from across the Council, development industry, and key agencies in attendance. The workshop was really beneficial, helping us scope the eventual structure and content of the document. In summary, the guidance covers:
how GI can be integrated into the design process, including some evaluation tools (such as the Place Standard and Building with Nature) that can help review and improve green infrastructure provision for new development and help embed sustainability considerations into the layout and design.
key principles and good practice for specific types of green infrastructure (active travel, landscaping, biodiversity, community growing, sustainable drainage etc.) which, as we all know ,can provide cross benefits for health and wellbeing, climate change, biodiversity and more. Local images of the Council area, rather than stock images, have been used to showcase the good practice, and demonstrate real life examples of green infrastructure delivered by collaborative, cross-sectoral working across the Council area.
Developer contributions for off-site improvements to recreational provision.
We deliberately used Building with Nature’s accreditation scheme to structure the guidance around the themes of ‘wellbeing, water and wildlife’. These themes helped us neatly fit different and overlapping aspects of green infrastructure into a coherent document and explain complicated GI concepts in an easy to understand and accessible way. By drawing attention to the themes, we are also publicising the accreditation scheme to a wide audience including developers, communities, Council officers and other interested groups.
The consultation of SG05 closed on 4th Match 2021 and we are currently reviewing the feedback received. We are aiming to publish the finalised version of the supplementary guidance in late Spring 2021.”
Building with Nature are delighted that Falkirk Council have chosen to use the Building with Nature Standards to shape their draft green infrastructure guidance and that the themes of ‘wellbeing, water and wildlife’ helped to structure their guidance.
Building with Nature are currently developing a one-day online green infrastructure training product to support local authorities in utilizing the Standards. This product is due to be launched in June 2021. For further information please contact Sophie Jones, Programme Manager at Building with Nature.
e. sophie@buidingwithnature.org.uk t. 07485 307237