Tranquillity - planning Fineshade's future

The Planning Officer had pointed out that Jack’s Green was only adjacent to the new area of tranquillity, but even so, he thought it relevant enough to flag up the importance of this new policy. Fineshade lies fully within the area so it is reasonable to assume that it would be even more important to any future planning application here. Questions were asked why the Planning Officer did not draw the council’s attention to the emerging policy at the meeting at which Fineshade’s application was determined in February 2015, fully 2 months after he had written this about Jack’s Green. However, councillors agreed with the parish council and, despite the Officer's recommendation of acceptance, the application was unanimously refused. 

 

What difference will it actually make?

 

So looking ahead, how will the Planning Authority set about ensuring that tranquillity is preserved? Is it simply a matter of ensuring that every new development minimises light and noise pollution and also minimises the visual and traffic impacts?  For example, would it be sufficient to ensure that outdoor lighting points downwards, that heat source pumps are regularly checked to ensure low noise levels, that there is sufficient screening of new buildings and that traffic impacts are reduced by encouraging staff car-sharing or encouraging use of
(non-existent!) public transport?  All such ideas have been part and parcel of sustainable developments for some time and have been regular requirements laid on developers by planning authorities.  Or is it the case that the new policy would simply not allow particular types of development in an area of tranquillity?

 

Forestry Commission use of tranquillity mapping

 

It is instructive to look for guidance on tranquillity to a rather unexpected source - the Forestry Commission Research Department. In March 1999 Simon Bell carried out what at the time was ground-breaking research on tranquillity mapping as an aid to forest planning. (Document available here.) He carried out a pilot survey to map the tranquillity (or lack of it!) of the Sherwood Forest area. In order to measure tranquillity, it was necessary first to define it and list factors that add to or detract from it. Some of this is very obvious stuff – make a road busier and the level of tranquillity falls, the larger a settlement the larger the visual psychological disturbance and the lower the tranquillity. Crucially, holiday and caravan parks are explicitly acknowledged as contributing to a reduction in tranquillity.

 

In the FC context, the report states: “Recreation at ‘honeypots’, such as the Major Oak, can reduce tranquillity due to the accumulated effect of people, structures and traffic.” Importantly though, there is an increase in tranquillity where there is woodland: “This demonstrates that strategically located woodland could enhance tranquillity in places where it is absent or low, with beneficial effects for local people”.

 

The author identified these potential uses for the new technique of tranquillity mapping:

 

• locating new woodland where the greatest increases in tranquillity are to be gained;

• using woodland to increase tranquillity in areas that are most disturbed near to where people live;

• testing the effect of felling woodlands on the tranquillity of part of an area.

 

Therefore it appears that FC have the expertise and ability to be able to produce tranquillity maps that show predicted tranquillity before and after a proposed holiday development in the middle of a woodland such as Fineshade. But on the other hand, perhaps it’s not worth the effort, because it’s just plain common sense that, if you introduce 2 miles of new roads, 70 lit and heated cabins with outdoor hot-tubs, a year-round population of over 300 people, daily delivery vehicles, children’s playground, bar, cafe and shop, then tranquillity will not be what it was.