The Bedfordshire and Luton Green Infrastructure Consortium’s definition of Green Infrastructure is: “A strategically planned and managed network of accessible greenspaces and access routes, landscapes, biodiversity and heritage which will meet the needs of existing and new communities in Bedfordshire & Luton by providing:

• an essential environmental foundation and support system;
• a healthy and rich environment;
• attractive places to live and visit and a good quality of life;
•  a sustainable future .

Green Infrastructure can include:

• Urban and country parks
• Local Nature Reserves and County Wildlife Sites
• Green open recreation spaces
• Public rights of way, cycleways and other recreational routes
• Commons and village greens
• Woodland
• Waterways, waterbodies and wetland
• Natural and semi-natural habitat for wildlife
• Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Scheduled Ancient Monuments
• Historic parks and gardens and historic landscapes
• Green corridors, including hedgerows, ditches, disused railways and verges.

A Strategic Green Infrastructure Plan has been completed. This Plan sets out a vision to create a high quality green network across Bedfordshire and Luton for the benefit of people, places and wildlife. It sets out our most valued green assets. It also examines opportunities for the creation of new parks, wildlife habitats, cycle paths, woodland and other new green infrastructure assets.

The Greensand Trust and Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity have also been working with communities on district and local level GI planning. This has led to work with individual parishes. Local level GI planning is complementing existing village and parish plan initiatives. Maps are provided to local people to demonstrate what is known about their local environment, and used as a tool in discussions about what they want for their local environment.

Opportunities  - if you have a plan, this helps you get resources
Challenges     - getting people involved and along to meetings and workshops
                          - how do you convince people that what they say will make a difference?
                          - how do communities engage with Local Strategic Plans, planning system etc?
Key issue        - to make sure plans translate into action on the ground.

Workshop discussion summary

What’s going on already?

Parish plans
Can feed into planning and help influence. But do planners have resources to take on board these documents or is it lip service?

Green Infrastructure 
GI must be regarded as essential infrastructure. There can be quick wins e.g. Awards for All funding. Does it make a difference?

Village Design Statements  
Have had an influence on design of village
Used for planning applications
[Local plan – site allocation]?

Issues/Barriers

• Mechanism for slotting parish plans in community plans and into the planning system
• Do we need a third party to summarise the key conclusions from individual plans?
• Can planners effectively challenge developers? – hear at appeals
• Law in favour of developers?
• How do we involve people – need to use a whole range of methods
• Powerlessness once it gets into the planning system – are communities getting a fair deal from planning?
• GI plans - Incredibly resource intensive!
• Need to give people a chance to express aspirations
• Planners’ support needs to be in place
• In some instances, planners have wanted to change the finished Village Design Statement
• Village Design Statements will be redundant under the new planning system.
• Community aspirations are being fed up to planners, developers and companies, but they need to be raised in a manageable way, and there needs to be more communication coming back down from the planners, developers and companies.
• [Maintaining character of areas – loopholes?]
• How do we manage conflict within the process?

Actions

• Legislation – limit the amount of money that can be put into a planning process appeal
• Explain processes
• Getting information out to people earlier – and to a range of people.
• Engage the politicians – Flitwick Moor is a good example of this.
• Ongoing dialogue is key
• Closer links needed between planning officers and the communities.

Key issues to feedback to plenary session

• Community consultation and delivery is under-resourced
• Communities feel disempowered