Planning plays key role in revitalisation of Seven Sisters

Planning plays key role in revitalisation of Seven Sisters

April 21, 2022

Vicki Colwell, Principal Planning Officer, writes about the £2m renovations at Seven Sisters Country Park and how the planning team have led a key role in helping to create first-class facilities.

The first phase of works at the Seven Sisters Visitor Centre are almost complete and visitors are starting to enjoy these bright and airy facilities.  The creation of a world-class visitor experience is a big step forward for the Authority and has involved staff from teams across the organisation.

The Planning Team have worked to ensure that it represents an exemplar development, in accordance with our Local Plan.  We ensured that we had all the right information about the sites – the visitor centre, Foxhole Cottages and the Camping Barn – in terms of ecology, water, trees, heritage, landscape character and how the place was used, to work out what was important.

This was used to shape the delivery of the first stage of proposals, including how best to extend the cottages, how to improve facilities at the camping barn and how to make it easier to navigate around the visitor centre area and create a space people wanted to explore more.

Our Local Plan policies include requirements for development to make a positive contribution to ecosystem services, deliver biodiversity net gain and deliver energy efficiencies.

We made sure that these measures were built in to the proposals from the beginning, so that they are fully integrated into the designs – for example, the garden space at Foxhole Cottages now provides enhanced water management opportunities, and a more diverse habitat which is also better connected.  The buildings and their surroundings at the visitor centre have been sensitively adapted to improve drainage and re-use water efficiently.

Thinking about how each design decision relates back to the evidence, and using this evidence to influence the choices made, has ensured that the whole scheme has been landscape-led and ultimately will result in a much better visitor experience at this treasured site.