KEY ISSUES

• The impact of housing and population growth now and in the future upon the community in relation to services, cohesion, traffic affordability.
• The impact of the growth of the industrial zone, with the build out of Sherburn 2.
• A lack of integrated and comprehensive leisure and sports facilities in the town.
• Opportunities for young people, in relation to out of school provision (for youth),employment, affordable homes.
• Educational facilities needing to expand and enhance provision in order to meet growth in demand.
• Improvements to the town centre in order to provide more for its local population and to become a more attractive and cohesive place.
• How to create a ‘greener’ and more sustainable community with improved link ages to the surrounding countryside, more integrated green spaces within the built uparea and with initiatives
• to increase awareness and action with regards to sustainability.
• How best to cherish and protect the town’s history and heritage assets.
• Addressing transport and connectivity within the town and beyond to surrounding communities and other service centres.

OBJECTIVES

• To ensure that homes of the right types are built to meet the needs of the whole community;
• To protect, improve and support the further provision of community and recreational facilities, in locations that meet community needs;
• To support growth in the level and variety of town centre shops and services;
• To improve public transport services and car parking provision and to develop better routes for all public rights of way users, between priority destinations;
• To protect, enhance and extend a green space network of landscape, wildlife and recreational value throughout the town and the wider parish;
• To create an attractive, green, safe and distinctive village centre where residents and visitors alike can relax and conduct their business, and where commerce can thrive;
• To identify and conserve the town’s built and archaeological heritage assets;
• To use the planning system to put a recognisable Sherburn stamp on new development in the town;
• To maintain Sherburn’s justified reputation as a safe place to live and grow up in.
• To place a ‘green’, environmentally-conscious and sustainability ethos at the Plan’s heart.

VISION STATEMENT

By 2040, Sherburn in Elmet will have grown from being a large village to a small town, with more housing and more employment development, but will have consolidated and reset after a period of concerted, significant growth.

Its housing stock will be better matched to the needs of local workers and the community as a whole. There will be a wider range of fit for purpose community and recreation facilities and services, not least for its young people, well-distributed around the town, and a better and more varied shopping and hospitality offer.

The town will be well-connected, both internally and externally, with frequent and efficient train and bus services and an enviable network of active, all-year usable, travel routes and initiatives covering all key destinations, clear and accessible to all.

A strong identity will have been built for this expanded Sherburn, clearly apparent at all points of entry, in the town centre, and along the main routes through, for example through attractive and well marked ‘gateways’ and, at its heart, a much improved town centre – greener, more attractive, more pedestrian friendly, where traffic and parking are well managed.

A network of green corridors will thread its way through the town, capitalising on existing green spaces, tree-lined verges and the area’s characteristic dikes, but better protected, enhanced and linking village with the surrounding countryside – always with wildlife conservation firmly in mind.

Sherburn’s rich and varied history and surviving built heritage will have been key to the cementing of its identity and to the image of its town centre, with individual heritage assets and the historic village core recognised, protected and progressively enhanced by new development.

The Sherburn of 2040 will be more self-sufficient, more sustainable, more green – still a safe community, where community cohesion and cross-generational respect have been enhanced, not least through the provisions of this Plan.