Draft Regulation 18 Sandwell Local Plan
Strategic Employment Areas
8.12 Policy SEC2 provides for a sufficient stock of Strategic Employment Land suitable for a growing and diversified economy. This Policy supports Strategic Objectives 2 and 8.
Policy SEC2 – Strategic Employment Areas
- The Strategic Employment Areas are shown on the Policies Map. They are characterised by excellent accessibility, high-quality environments and clusters of high technology growth sector businesses. These areas will be safeguarded for manufacturing and logistics uses within Use Classes E(g)(ii), E(g)(iii), B2 and B8.
- Within Strategic Employment Areas, high-quality development or redevelopment of sites and premises will be required, and planning applications that prejudice or dilute the delivery of appropriate employment activity, or deter investment in such uses, will be refused.
- Strategic Employment Areas will be safeguarded from redevelopment for other non-manufacturing / logistics uses.
- Some ancillary employment-generating non-Class E(g)(ii), E(g)(iii), and Class-B2 and B8 uses, such as childcare facilities and small-scale food and drink outlets, may also be permitted in Strategic Employment Areas, where they can be shown to strongly support, maintain or enhance the business and employment function and attractiveness of the area, and meet sequential and other national or local policy tests relating to appropriate uses as necessary.
Justification
8.13 Strategic Employment Areas (SEAs) are high-quality employment areas that are considered essential to the long-term success of Sandwell's economy. They correspond to areas of the strongest occupier and market demand and are of high environmental quality with excellent links to the Strategic Highway Network and should be protected from non-employment uses that could impact upon their viability as employment locations. These areas contain, or have the potential to attract, those knowledge-based growth sector businesses whose success will be critical to the delivery of Sandwell's economic ambitions.
8.14 Policy SEC2 is based on the approach set out in the 2011 Core Strategy, which distinguished between Strategic High-Quality Employment Areas and Local Employment Areas. The EDNA recommended that the approach set out in the Black Country Core Strategy has served the Black Country well. Subject to some refinement, this approach has been carried forward into the SLP. Consequently, the Strategic Employment Areas identified in the SLP are the equivalent of the Strategic High-Quality Employment Areas in the former Core Strategy.
8.15 The characteristics and extent of the Strategic Employment Areas reflect the findings of the Sandwell Employment Area Review (SEAR). The SEAR re-examined the totality of Sandwell's employment areas against a set of criteria based on those set out in the Core Strategy and the recommendations of the EDNA.
8.16 The key characteristics of Strategic Employment Areas are as follows:
- to be highly accessible to the Strategic Highway Network, preferably well- located in relation to the motorway network, to provide good accessibility to international, national, and regional markets and supply chains;
- to have good public transport accessibility;
- to maintain a critical mass of active industrial and logistics sites and premises that are well suited to the needs of modern industry;
- to maintain an existing (or develop a potential) high-quality environment, including suitable landscaping and greenspace and an attractive and functional built environment;
- to be attractive to national and / or international investment.
8.17 The majority of the defined strategic employment areas satisfy all these characteristics or are considered capable of acquiring them. The SEAR has found that it is not always necessary for an area to display all these characteristics to attract high-quality development.
8.18 The broad extent of the strategic employment areas is shown on the Policies Map.
8.19 The Plan seeks to safeguard land and premises within strategic employment areas for industrial and logistics activity and supports proposals that involve the improvement and renewal of land and premises within them. This process of redevelopment, intensification and enhancement of existing Local Employment Areas will provide a significant source of land to meet future growth needs.
8.20 Some small-scale ancillary uses will be supported in strategic employment areas where this meets the day-to-day needs of employees of businesses within the SEA. Such uses include food and drink or childcare facilities. They should be of a scale, nature, and location to serve the needs of the employment area, where existing facilities are inadequate and where such needs cannot be met in adjacent town centres. While Policy SEC2 considers development for uses that are not within an industrial employment use class, these will only be supported in exceptional circumstances as it is the intention to safeguard strategic employment areas from non-manufacturing / logistics uses (B Use Classes).