GUIDANCE to address Bridge Street’s high vacancy rates and ‘mediocre’ building fronts have been included in a major planning document.

Warrington Borough Council’s cabinet is set to approve amendments to the town centre supplementary planning document (SPD) and the house extensions SPD, as well as approving the final version of the two documents, during its meeting next Monday.

The council says the town centre SPD is important in providing further interpretation of the current local plan’s town centre policies.

When bringing forward proposals, developers will use the guidance to inform the design of schemes on their sites.

They will also be aware of the council’s regeneration ambitions and expectations for the area and how these should be reflected in any planning applications to be submitted.

Meanwhile, the development management team will use the guidance as a benchmark to consider the suitability of any development put forward at the pre‐application and application stage and then be able to support and justify decision making on developments ensuring they meet the authority’s design standards and principles.

The town centre SPD says Time Square and the Cultural Quarter form the core of the town centre and are home to major retailing and commercial activity.

It adds that the town centre masterplan sees this area as key to the regeneration of the borough with residential living, cultural facilities, office uses, leisure uses and small business uses all promoted.

Furthermore, the document says Bridge Street, and lower Bridge Street in particular, suffers from high vacancy rates, the ‘mediocre quality’ of some of ground floor frontages and an ‘over concentration’ of food and drink uses.

It states development should seek to increase the range of uses, make use of the upper floors of buildings and take opportunities to improve the appearance of the shop frontages, particularly by replacing the presence of solid security shutters with more appropriate alternatives as specified in the council’s design and construction SPD.

The document also highlights that the area features recently enhanced formal urban green spaces at Bank Park and Queens Gardens, together with the creation of a new public square in the Time Square development. It said new development should take advantage of these public spaces, complementing them with new green spaces while improving access and links between them.

The town centre SPD says developments should be people-focused and properly consider how pedestrian and cyclists will move in and around any buildings.

A building will be classed as a tall building where it is significantly higher in scale than the buildings within its locality or if it is a building which ‘significantly changes’ the skyline.

Any taller buildings proposed will need to be designed and justified with regard to their setting and the height of surrounding buildings.

But significant buildings of height that relate to key gateways and along the A49 may be considered. This may be between 10 and 12 storeys at the identified key gateways and up to eight storeys along the A49 corridor.

However, reference should be made to the guidance at the neighbourhood scale for locations where these buildings may be considered appropriate and applicants must still justify any proposals for such buildings based on contextual appraisal and strong design rationale.