Draft Public Realm Design Guide for Taunton Garden Town

Overview

We are now consulting on the draft Public Realm Design Guide for Taunton Garden Town which is a document illustrating the Council’s aspirations for maintaining and improving the public realm design quality across the Taunton Garden Town area. The consultation will take place from Friday 11 December to Friday 5 February 2021.

The purpose of the draft document is to raise the standard of the public realm and streetworks consistently across our Garden Town. The guide is aimed at guiding the design of public realm and street works by the highway authority, developers, utility companies and their agents and contractors. It also attempts to show how current principles of highway design and layout can be incorporated into good placemaking.

When adopted by Somerset West and Taunton Council the Public Realm Design Guide for Taunton Garden Town will be a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) and a material consideration when determining development proposals and applications.  It will also inform discussions with our statutory consultees and inform emerging policies within the new joint Local Plan. Views from local communities, businesses, key stakeholders and the development industry are therefore important in helping to shape the document for maintaining and improving the quality of design across Somerset West and Taunton.

Consultation was originally carried out on this document with technical stakeholders in early 2020.  However, given the government’s agenda since Covid to increase local walking and cycling and the overlap with the enlarged Streetmaking & Parking section of the Districtwide Design Guide, it is considered that full public consultation would be beneficial.  All comments previously submitted will be taken into consideration.

Why we are consulting

The Public Realm Design Guide will be used by:

• Planning Officers to assess the design quality of development proposals when determining planning applications and offering pre-application advice;
• Council members when assessing development proposals in advance of, and at, Planning Committee;
• Applicants and developers when preparing their schemes.

We are, therefore, running an eight-week consultation on the draft Public Realm Design Guide to seek formal comments on this important planning guidance document.

Responses to the proposals in this consultation document will inform the final version of the Public Realm Design Guide which is planned to be reported to the Council for adoption in Spring 2021.