Developing a vision for Colchester

There are many things that contribute to Colchester City as a place. Its distinct and diverse built and landscape character alongside the city’s rich history and natural assets (ranging from urban to rural to coastal), and its military and university links, influences its diversity and interest, and place it as a key regional centre. Colchester’s location means it is well connected to the local and wider strategic transport network (rail, road, sustainable/active) making it an ideal location to take advantage of these opportunities for future benefits. Its transport links enable residents to study or work within Colchester and/or across the wider region. The presence of the University of Essex is a national and internationally significant asset, which attracts and retains young people in the City, provides quality further education locally, and supports research and development. There is also associated support for productivity / SME growth etc via the Knowledge Gateway. Previously ranked second in England for the 'value-added' score in the Guardian University 5 Guide, the University is a significant part of Colchester’s place influence. Together with the Colchester Institute and Colchester Sixth Form, these institutions provide courses and training to thousands of Essex residents each year. Colchester’s size helps to support: • cultural and digital economy strengths; • city centre businesses (146,000 consumers in the City and 220,000 including its hinterland) and a city centre masterplan and regeneration programme; • employment opportunities for residents (68,000 jobs in the City and 105,000 including its hinterland); • business recruitment (95,000 working age population of which 38,000 graduates in the City and 138,000 working age population of which 57,000 graduates including its hinterland); and • the planned Rapid Transit Service which will connect the northern Park & Ride site, Colchester Northern Gateway, the City Centre, hospital, University of Essex campus, and Tendring-Colchester Borders Garden Community. Cultural strengths, which attract overnight and day visitors, supporting the local economy include Colchester Zoo as a major regional tourist attraction; and its profile of being the first recorded town and first capital city with a rich Roman legacy, and military heritage as a garrison town. The rural countryside is significant for its natural and historic environment, as well as providing an appealing landscape setting for the Colchester city urban area, local villages and rural communities. The River Colne serves as a natural green corridor and amenity for neighbouring communities. Colchester offers a wide range of green spaces from its: • beaches in Mersea, • parks and gardens e.g., High Woods, Lexden, Hilly Fields, Salary Brook, • nature reserves and local wildlife sites e.g., Abberton Reservoir, Fingringhoe etc., • other designated sites such as SSSIs, SAC, ANOBs etc. e.g. Colne Estuary SPA/SAC, Dedham Vale ANOB, • number waterways e.g., River Colne, • Public Rights of Way (PRoW) network including Colchester Orbital, • playgrounds, outdoor sport facilities and green spaces around premises (such as school grounds, cemeteries), and • agricultural land where parts are accessible through PRoW.

The following are seen as important opportunities. • Addressing climate change • Creating well designed and attractive places, and promoting the health and social wellbeing of communities, including cultural development • Promoting smart, active travel and sustainable transport • Protecting and enhancing the natural and historic environment, and supporting an increase in biodiversity and ecological networks • Ensuring sustainable patterns of development • Meeting the needs for the full range and types of new homes and ensuring affordability • Fostering growth and investment and providing new jobs • Delivering new and improved strategic and local infrastructure • Encouraging resilience in retail, leisure and commercial uses/activity. 6 There is a significant opportunity to embed sustainable design, sustainable transport planning and build for a decarbonised future. In this respect the Colchester Future Transport Strategy vision for Colchester can be embedded within the new Colchester Local Plan. This states, ‘To transform Colchester into a place which prioritises active and safe sustainable travel to bring about health, environmental and economic benefits.’ This vision is underpinned by a series of objectives, which can support high quality place-making and should be reflected in the new Colchester Local Plan. • Providing attractive and healthy environments: Protect, enhance, and improve the quality of the natural, built, and historic environment and reduce air pollution, to enhance residents’, workers’, and visitors’ quality of life. • Improving sustainable transport modes: Offer an attractive and effective choice of sustainable travel (bus, cycling, walking) to encourage increased use and reduce pressure on the road network. • Supporting economic growth and connectivity: Provide high quality transport improvements to enhance network connectivity. Support housing and economic growth in Colchester by linking communities together and enabling access to key services, transport hubs, jobs, and education. • Providing a safer transport environment: Improve safety and the perception of safety within Colchester to promote a safe travelling environment for all road users. • Managing demand: Manage traffic levels across Colchester’s road network and limit levels of traffic in the town centre to reduce delays and improve journey time reliability, maximising capacity through innovative solutions. • Managing roads and signs: Secure and maintain roads and signage to an appropriate standard and ensure the network is available for use with sufficient resilience to cope with incidents. The Colchester Future Transport Strategy reflects key objectives contained in the Essex Local Transport Plan 3 - The Essex Transport Strategy (LTP3), which also provide opportunities for Colchester looking ahead to 2041. • Providing the transport improvements needed to accommodate housing and employment growth in a sustainable way; • Improving the availability, reliability and punctuality of local bus services; • Improving the attractiveness of public spaces to support regeneration; • Improving and promoting cycle networks; and improving the availability of travel choices and awareness of them; • Improving journeys for commuters travelling to London from Colchester; particularly by improving access to railway stations and improving facilities for passengers. LTP3 currently being updated and consultation on LTP4 is expected later in the year. There is also the opportunity to ensure best practice is embedded in new policy such as the following contained in the Essex Design Guide, • permeable layouts that connect well with existing walking, cycling and passenger transport networks within and outside of the development; • the Healthy Streets ‘whole-street’ approach, including how to encourage active travel among all demographic groups; • prioritise (in order) walking, cycling and public transport desire-lines access, which maximise sustainable access between settlements and to key local movement generators; • provision of high-quality communal spaces with supporting facilities which encourage activity by users and co-located within the layouts of new developments; • removing unnecessary through traffic in new residential areas - the layout and attractiveness of the environment should be such as to discourage the use of the car for local trips and encourage walking and cycling; 7 • designing for future adaptation of spaces, enabling them to accommodate changes in the way we use streets and transport; and • the use of future technology infrastructure, such as smart streetlights, street furniture, cycle parking and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which is planned and integrated successfully into new streets and spaces. There is an opportunity to embed the North Essex Economic Board (NEEB) priorities within the new Local Plan. Colchester City is one of seven North Essex authorities (Braintree District Council, Chelmsford City Council, Colchester City Council, Essex County Council, Maldon District Council, Tendring District Council and Uttlesford District Council) catalysing collective action to drive economic prosperity within all parts of the urban, rural and coastal region. NEEB provides the strategic oversight of North Essex’s diverse, inclusive and productive economic priorities, ensuring tangible actions are delivered to support residents’ and businesses’ goals and aspirations. Promoting the region’s potential, the NEEB presents the strong strategic rationale for further central government and private sector investment, needed to deliver North Essex’s long-term ambitions. NEEB has prepared a North Essex Economic Strategy and Delivery Plan, which comprises three sections: a strategic narrative; a delivery plan; and an economic baseline. The overarching vision for the North Essex economy is for it to be: “A proactive, productive and progressive North Essex that advances its economic potential through inward and outward-facing partnerships, with all residents, businesses and visitors benefitting from the region’s economic prosperity. This is supported by four key strategic priorities. • Innovative Businesses and Skilled Residents. A resilient and outward-facing economy that builds on its incumbent strengths and is positioned to deliver economic opportunities for North Essex’s residents, and drive inward investment to support businesses within the region’s critical growth sectors. • A Green and High Growth Economy. A forward-looking economy that utilises the diversity of its resources in a sustainable way that furthers North Essex’s clean energy strengths, boosts growth, and promotes residents’ prosperity through net zero commitments. • A Dynamic and Connected Region. A well-connected and digitally-linked region that provides residents with quick and reliable access to key services, encourages inward investment, and makes the most of ties to regional and international neighbours. • Prosperous and Inclusive Communities. A thriving and inclusive region where all residents and businesses have the opportunity to contribute and prosper, exemplifying the region as a great place to live, work and visit. The continued expansion of Knowledge Gateway Colchester is considered to be a measure of success of the City in future years, as it supports startups and high potential firms, as well as the potential to attract larger businesses and providing higher productivity jobs. There are opportunities to be realised in sectoral clustering of advanced manufacturing, construction, digital technology, and care businesses. There is the opportunity to deliver the City Centre master plan, • building on and bringing out key heritage assets; • redeveloping under-used sites to help regenerate parts of the city centre; • introducing additional mixed uses including residential, workspace and cultural uses; • providing new and improved public spaces; and • improving public realm, connectivity, and transport interchange. City Centre regeneration can provide accessible amenities and services to residents, as well as generating wages and profits for residents. There is an important balance to be struck between 8 preserving the City’s heritage and helping it adapt to changing consumer behaviours. In this regard, several opportunities include, • Strength of Colchester in the Energy Sector compared with rest of Essex. • Continued development of the University of Essex as a centre of excellence, especially for SME related activity and green skills. The University of Essex is ranked No 2 in the UK in the provision of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, predominantly in the fields of data science and AI. • Upgrade of existing facilities at Colchester Institute in order to deliver first class training facilities for residents and support for businesses. • The Creative Colchester Partnership brings together creative business and arts organisation leaders alongside higher education and local authority representatives who work on developing a strategic vision to grow Colchester’s creative, cultural, and digital economy. • Essex has a number of existing skills and innovation assets in the key sectors including several at Colchester - University of Essex Institute for Analytics and Data Science, UoE Biomedical Sciences Centre, UoE Innovation Centre Knowledge Gateway, the Centre for Health and Social Care Professionals, Colchester Institute STEM Innovation Centre, and CI Energy Skills Centre. • The planned Iceni Centre development at Colchester Hospital will build on existing capabilities in Robotic Surgery to create a leading centre for training both inside and outside the UK. There is an opportunity to create a cohesive network of interconnected green corridors and green and blue infrastructure (GBI) throughout Colchester, building on its distinct identity derived from its natural, historic, and urban environments. This can in part be achieved through urban greening, GBI delivery via new developments and improved connectivity that can all deliver a wider GBI network and contribute to a Local Nature Recovery Network. In this respect, it would support the vision of the Essex GI Strategy (2020) to ‘protect, develop and enhance a high quality connected green infrastructure network that extends from our city and town centres, and urban areas to the countryside and coast and which is selfsustaining and is designed for people and wildlife.’. With careful consideration, GBI has the potential to form a landscape wide network and contribute to local nature recovery. References include The River Colne Pilot Study (2022), conducted by the University of Essex and Colchester City Council, the Essex Green Infrastructure Strategy (2020) and the Green Essex Story Map. The ECAC Report (2021) outlines the importance of GI for biodiversity, flood and drought control, soil health, air quality, reduced urban heat island effect and human health and wellbeing. ECAC outlines the following recommendations for Essex. • 30% of all land in Essex will enhance biodiversity and the natural environment by creating natural green infrastructure. We expect these figures to be 25% by 2030 and 30% by 2040. • To increase urban greening – 30% greening of our towns, villages, and new developments by 2040. • Flood and water management, for those properties at risk of flooding to include Integrated Water Management and Natural Flood Management techniques. ECAC has identified the river catchment of the Blackwater and Colne as a Climate Focus Area (CFA). This is a particular geographical region where a focused effort can be made to accelerate climate action and provide exemplars, for learning and innovation, that will be shared with the rest of Essex. Among the objectives of the CFA are to achieve net zero carbon, biodiversity net gain, improve soil health and air quality, reduce flooding and urban heat island effect, and enhance amenity, liveability and wellbeing of Essex communities. It will achieve this by wholesale landscape change in rural areas and urban areas. In March 2022, the Essex Local Nature Partnership (LNP) was established. The Essex LNP is an independent body to that of ECC that meet quarterly (for further details see here). The Essex LNP has committed to the delivery of four key targets: • 25% of all land in Essex will enhance biodiversity and the natural environment by creating natural green infrastructure. (This is an ECAC target that has been adopted by the LNP). 9 • 50% of all farmland in Essex will adopt sustainable land stewardship practices by 2030. (This is an ECAC target that has been adopted by the LNP) • For the LNP adopt the Wildlife Trust’s 1-in-4 programme to engage residents with nature and achieve a 25% engagement level. • Accessible Natural Green Space Standards (ANGSt) target for everyone to have access to high quality natural space close to home and work. The Greater Essex Local Nature Recovery Strategy (GELNRS) is being prepared for consultation mid2024. The GELNRS will form the baseline for habitat information, which in turn will generate action to promote biodiversity management and improvement. There is an opportunity to set standards for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). The Essex LNP Biodiversity and Planning Working Group are currently reviewing and exploring the feasibility for 20% BNG. Colchester may wish to consider adopting a higher figure in the new Local Plan than the minimum 10% requirement within the Environment Act (2021). Colchester also has fragments of ancient woodlands which could present an opportunity to be part of the Big Green Internet Project by planting wildlife corridors and hedgerows to connect isolated woodlands in Essex together. In this regard there are opportunities to work with the Essex Forest Initiative.

There are many things that Colchester should be known for in 2041 and beyond. It will be a place of healthy, inclusive, safe and sustainable communities supported by a wide range of social, physical and green/blue infrastructure. Residents will start well in life, stay well and age well where health inequalities are reduced. Colchester will play a lead role in ensuring the county is well on the way to becoming net zero by, or before, 2050, in accordance with the recommendations of the ECAC Report. Many climate change solutions deliver economic benefits while improving lives and protecting the environment, and include: • All new buildings will be designed and built to be Net Zero Carbon in operation. They will be ultralow energy buildings, fossil fuel free, and generate renewable energy on-site to at least match annual energy use. • Waste will be avoided where people and businesses recycle, reuse, repair and refurbish as much as possible. A Circular Economy will operate where industries are set up to re-use materials carefully. • The university, colleges, and schools will inspire and equip future generations with the skills needed to tackle the climate crisis. • Skilled workers will want to come and live in Colchester and green industries will invest. Existing businesses will be transformed into low carbon, and environmentally responsible organisations. • Local businesses and organisations, and all the people who live, work, and play in Colchester will understand the climate challenge and contribute collectively to moving us towards our net zero target. All people will have safe, convenient, and affordable access to key services by a range of modes of transport. Development will be located in places that maximise sustainable access for people and goods and designed around the prioritisation of active and sustainable transport. Improved and cohesive transport networks will enable residents to enjoy Colchester City, its facilities and surrounding areas. The objectives from the Colchester Futures Transport Strategy will be delivered where there is a transport network that is sustainable for the long term with a minimised impact on the natural and built environment. 10 Colchester will be known by businesses for, • attracting and retaining a talented workforce, supporting business survival and growth as well as local economic growth; • providing a good choice of quality business accommodation, supporting business survival and growth as well as local economic growth; and • its strong innovation ecosystem, supporting improved productivity and faster business / local economic growth. The City Centre Masterplan objectives will be delivered where, • an improved mix of uses has created a more vibrant city centre, with more people living in, visiting and working there; • new and improved public squares create a more animated and attractive spaces; and • this is a more attractive city centre with new developments having contributed to the richness of the city centre and the quality of the environment. Colchester will be known for its world class, high quality inclusive education from early years and childcare, primary and secondary, 6th Form and Post 16, Further and Higher Education. There will be safe direct walking and cycling routes to schools. Schools and educational providers will have creative curriculums that understand and respond to local needs in a dynamic way, which will include meeting the needs of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Colchester and partners can ensure that local post 16 provision is forward looking and people can access the skills within the area, whilst ensuring that those with needs or who are disadvantaged are planned for within the workforce. Outcomes will include, • world class integrated post-16 educational and training facilities that others emulate; • world class university that is integrated into the community and is used as an example of good practice across the world; and • a one-stop-shop approach to Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance for all young people and residents of the City. Colchester will be known for mainstreaming and its strong commitment to the protection, enhancement and delivery of GBI as well as the natural environment. It will establish the highest standards of practice for GI in new developments (including garden communities), retrofit existing urban and rural areas, and facilitate urban greening of the city and towns. A multifunctional and connected landscape wide GBI network will be created. Colchester’s natural and historical landscapes will be used to create a distinctive place that helps people to recognise and connect to nature by protecting, creating and enhancing the local landscape and character through strengthening existing characteristics, that is inclusive for all. Green infrastructure and open space should be approached from a multifunctional perspective, combining uses such as sustainable drainage, public open space, green corridors/walking and cycling routes that are shaded by street trees and biodiversity net gain to combine functional uses with amenity benefits. These features should be strategically located, maximising the benefits and connectivity to site users while increasing the usability of multifunctional space. The interconnectivity of the natural environment, flood protection and water management, outdoor sport and open/green space, and public realm is an important part of the GBI network where all aspects work together. The right design and location will deliver a wide range of functions and benefits of GBI for people and wildlife. Every effort will be made to ensure that connections between green spaces, local amenities and developments are achieved to ensure that routes make sustainable connections and are attractive through the delivery of GBI for the benefit of the new community and existing communities. All of which contribute to thriving green (GBI), biodiverse (BNG) nature (GELNRS) rich place, fostering health, and resilient communities.