Issues and Options Document

New housing should be located on sites that are already well served by infrastructure and should avoid harm to existing environmental assets.

Housing should be targeted at places where it can have a positive environmental impact to help achieve landscape restoration and recovery. This requires an up-to-date and well-informed ecological network map, which identifies existing natural features and habitats, alongside areas where new habitats are needed to restore ecosystems and help wildlife recover.

New housing developments and houses themselves should be designed to integrate space for both wildlife and people, as well as to reduce carbon emissions and minimise water usage.

A good nature-friendly development protects and keeps existing wildlife habitats and joins them up with wildlife-rich gardens, verges, amenity green space, cycle paths and walkways. The aim is to create a network of natural green and blue corridors weaving through the development and beyond, into the surrounding urban or rural landscape and contributing to the wider ecological network.

This approach improves air quality, reduces surface water flooding and makes developments greener and more attractive places to live. Residents have easy access to safe, beautiful, natural space for exercise, play and social interaction. Wildlife becomes part of everyday life.

New housing developments should provide:

* Real, measurable gains for wildlife and make a demonstrable, positive contribution to nature's recovery.

* Effective water management, pollution and climate control provided by green spaces and water courses, sustainable urban drainage, green roofs, trees, woodlands, wetlands and other natural features.

* Connectivity between wild places - enabling both wildlife and people to move through the landscape, and for natural processes to operate effectively.

* Improved health, wellbeing and quality of life for people living and working nearby.

* Easy access to high quality, wildlife-rich, natural green space for everyone, providing daily opportunities to experience wildlife.

Benefits of this approach

Housing developments designed with environmental sensitivity and green infrastructure at their heart can deliver multiple social, environmental and economic benefits. Nature-rich housing can provide benefits for everyone - from developers to home-owners.

Benefits for wildlife:

* No loss of key wildlife sites - better protection of the already diminished wildlife resource and sites. Protection and beneficial management for Local Wildlife Sites and sites of national and international importance for wildlife.

* Much more space for wildlife - a substantial increase in the creation and restoration of habitats, through additional funding and resources, for example Section 106 agreements and conservation covenants - contributing to an overall increase in the abundance and diversity of wildlife and an improvement of soil and catchment health.

* Improved connectivity of wildlife habitats - both within developments and linking to the wider landscape and ecological networks beyond.

* Buildings that are more wildlife-friendly - with bird and bat boxes, pollinator and insect-friendly structures and connected spaces for hedgehogs.

* Reduced emissions - reducing carbon emissions, pollutants and water use to help minimise threats to wildlife.

Benefits for people:

* Daily enjoyment of nature - people can experience and benefit from contact with wildlife and wild places in their daily lives, because there is wildlife around them near to home.

* Improved health - accessible natural green spaces for fresh air, exercise and quiet contemplation improve health and wellbeing, for example by helping to lower levels of heart disease, obesity, stress and depression.

* Protection against extremes of climate - natural green spaces and trees within urban areas help stabilise temperature and reduce pollution.

* Safer transport routes - networks of natural green spaces can provide safe and attractive pedestrian and cycle routes.

* Sense of community - natural green space in and around housing areas can provide a shared space for the local community to come together and socialise - reducing isolation.

Benefits for the economy and wider society:

* Cost-effective environmental protection - providing green space in and around housing is a cost-effective and sustainable way of increasing environmental resilience, for example by reducing surface water flooding and improving air quality.

* Employment - when communities get involved in the planning and management of the natural green space where they live this provides jobs and volunteering opportunities.

* Space for local food - networks of natural green space in and around housing areas provide opportunities for local food production, bee keeping, etc.

* Attracting investment - high quality developments rich in natural green space can attract further investment from business and visitors.

* Reduced health-care costs - people living in developments with more green space are likely to place fewer demands on the NHS, as they enjoy better health and higher quality of life.

Benefits for developers:

* Satisfied customers - houses and developments set in natural green space are more desirable to buyers.

* Market value - houses in greener developments can have a higher market value.

* Enhanced brand value - developers that take a lead on nature build their brand and change the sector as a whole.

* Improved high-calibre skills recruitment - such developers are also more likely to attract up-and-coming graduates by demonstrating a genuine commitment to the environment.

* Improved environmental performance - helping drive higher ranking in sustainability and nature indices, making the direct links to the benefits of a natural capital approach.

* Happier communities - new houses designed to retain existing natural features with high quality greenspace are more acceptable to existing residents.

Principles guiding this approach

All housing developments must result in:

* A measurable improvement for wild species and habitats, avoiding any loss of or damage to wildlife sites - new housing must not damage or destroy important national and local wildlife sites. Our natural environment is finite. These sites are remnants of a rich past and essential to our future.

* More than compensating for any habitat that is lost - where damage to existing habitats is unavoidable, mitigation must bring about an overall gain in habitats. This should be assessed objectively using an improved version of the Defra biodiversity metric.

* Creating new habitat - habitat creation should be a standard feature of all new housing development, wherever it is.

* Designing in existing habitats - new housing must work with as much existing habitat as possible. For example, retaining existing woods, copses, hedges and streams as integral parts of new developments.

All residents having lasting access to nearby nature, which means:

* Providing wildlife on the doorstep - space for wildlife must be designed into new development, much of this should be easily accessible to people.

* Ensuring our natural spaces are well managed for posterity - maintaining local green spaces is as essential as maintaining roads, power and other important infrastructure. Financial planning should account for this at the outset, through a service charge or capital endowment.

* Empowering communities - for major housing developments provision should be made to empower local residents to come together to maintain shared spaces, grow food and understand the area they live in.

* Engaging civil society - local charities and social enterprises have skills and experience that will be vital to ongoing community engagement.

The only way society can ensure this will be by:

* Using ecological network maps - such maps should be built from local, up to date data with the active involvement of civil society and must be the basis for deciding where new housing is (and isn't) located, and how close it is to existing natural areas and wildlife habitats.

* Developing within environmental limits - decisions about the planning, design and construction of new housing must be based on a thorough understanding of the natural environment's capacity to meet the demands placed on it.

* Employing ecological expertise - when making decisions on land use and new development planning authorities should consult experienced ecologists and ensure they have access to high quality wildlife and environmental data.

We recommend that the current policy is strengthened to identify and seek to enhance local and landscape scale wildlife corridors and networks which support wildlife and biodiversity and increase resilience to climate change.

We would support this approach with the caveat that we would wish to see strengthening of the overall strategic approach to protecting and enhancing protected and priority habitats. This should include a firm commitment to the principle of enhancing habitat connectivity through the creation of new wildlife corridors and contributing to landscape-scale protection and conservation of wildlife and biodiversity. The Local Wildlife Sites review should form the basis for robust protection of LoWS as an integral component of such a policy.

We would support an amendment to the policy on greenways to include a firm policy commitment to ensuring the delivery of strategic greenways across the district.

While we fully support the commitment to the RSPB's Wild Coast Project we would recommend that this policy is retained as a separate stand-alone policy.

Essex Marina is an unrelated development which we feel should be dealt with in a separate policy to avoid confusion.