New housing guide to set ‘benchmark for quality’ in Cheshire East residential schemes

Cheshire East Council has unveiled new design guidelines for developers to follow as they deliver housing schemes in the borough.

The Cheshire East Residential Design Guide, which the authority hopes will help maintain high standards for future residential developments, has been formally adopted and launched.

The guide, a supplementary planning document to support current and emerging Local Plans, is intended to ensure all new schemes achieve a high quality of design while reflecting local distinctiveness and characteristics through their materials and other aspects.

The guide includes changes that arose after an eight-week consultation in 2016 that surveyed the views of 12k people.

The council’s executive director for place, Frank Jordan, said: “This design guide will help to set a benchmark for quality and a ‘sense of place’.

“While we want to see more imaginative developments that are pleasing to the eye, we would like to see designs that reflect the characteristics of the town, village and community in which they are situated.”

He continued: “Where development is not of the requisite quality, then the design guide, in support of Local Plan policy, provides justification to refuse permission as part of the planning balance.

“Now adopted, it will form a material consideration when determining planning applications for new housing development.”

Speaking further, Mr Jordan said the guide will serve as an important part of “a toolkit of measures” aimed helping designers and developers “better understand the character of the borough”.

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