Lincoln’s Heritage Connect wins
coveted regional planning award
25 November 2011
The City of Lincoln Council’s “Heritage Connect” is the overall
winner of the prestigious 2011 East Midlands Royal Town Planning
Institute Awards (RTPI), sponsored by Browne Jacobson.
The winner was announced at the annual award ceremony held at
Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire’s Country Cricket Ground.
Heritage Connect is a website that splits up the city into 108
different ‘character areas’ and displays information about its
history, development, environment and character. Planners and
developers use it to ensure new developments contribute or add to
an area, and members of the public are using it as evidence when
commenting on planning applications, and it is potentially
extremely useful for creating neighbourhood plans.
In giving the Browne Jacobson LLP sponsored award, President of
the RTPI Richard Summers said: "The Lincoln Heritage Connect
project is an outstanding interactive web-based town character
assessment. The joint Lincoln City Council and English Heritage
initiative led by Adam Partington, Townscape Manager, is the well
deserved overall winner of the East Midlands RTPI Planning Awards.
I was particularly impressed by the contribution that the character
assessment is making to locally distinctive place shaping in plan
making and development management decisions."
Pete Boswell, Head of Planning Services at the City of Lincoln
Council, said: “Heritage Connect Lincoln is helping to manage
change in the city, as we are using it in the planning process when
looking at the overall vision for the city. It is a fantastic tool
to use when considering how new developments and changes to the
city’s built environment contribute to the historic, current and
future character of a particular place. Developers are already on
board with using Heritage Connect and the evidence it displays to
improve their designs and help us to grow the city in the right
way. We’d like to encourage more residents of Lincoln to use the
site – for their own knowledge and pleasure, but especially as a
way of commenting on planning applications and making their own
aspirations for a place known.”
Commenting on the very strong award submissions, Steve Coult
from the sponsors of the event, solicitors Browne Jacobson LLP,
said: “Another year of very high quality entries justifies Browne
Jacobson's association with the East Midlands Awards. We are an
innovating law firm with a strong planning practice and are happy
to support recognition for the best new practice amongst planners
in the region.”
In addition to the overall winner, the following schemes
received awards in particular categories:
- Haven Court Affordable Housing, Boston Borough Council
(regeneration)
- Moat Lane Regeneration Project, WNDC & South
Northamptonshire Council (public realm)
- Heritage Connect Project, City of Lincoln (planning process
category, and overall winner).
The following schemes received commendations:
- Derwent Meadows, Derby City Council
- Northamptonshire Minerals and Waste Development, Framework,
Northamptonshire County Council
- Elm Bank Care Home, Kettering Borough Council