We are excited to share that Winchester City Council and the Partnership for South Hampshire Strategy Environmental Planning Team (now the Solent Mitigation Partnership) received a ‘Commendation’ at the National Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) awards for Excellence in Planning for the Natural Environment for the Winchester Nutrient Mitigation Strategy!
The RTPI judges “commended this project for its innovative phosphorus mitigation, which unlocks housing development and significantly improves water quality, setting a benchmark for sustainable planning.”
This project started in 2022 in response to Natural England advising local planning authorities that new overnight development within the River Itchen catchment would require phosphorus mitigation.
The Strategic Environmental Planning Team and Winchester City Council prepared a nutrient budget for the emerging Winchester Local Plan 2040 and the existing backlog of development that had formed due to limited availability of phosphorus mitigation. This informed a new strategy to bring forward a number of wastewater treatment work and water efficiency upgrades to Council owned properties. The strategy has been funded by the Council’s Housing Revenue Account and the Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund.
The nitrogen and phosphorus mitigation generated by this project can currently be purchased from Winchester City Council and will soon be available from the Solent Mitigation Partnership. Some of the generated mitigation has already been used by Winchester City Council’s Housing Delivery Team to prevent planning delays and deliver much needed affordable housing schemes! The income generated by the sale of credits will go towards funding further upgrades across Winchester and the wider Solent area.
The learnings from this project are now being used across the Solent Mitigation Partnership authorities to improve water quality and water usage across Hampshire. These projects will also provide local economic benefits by reducing the utilities bills for council tenants and unlocking local development projects!
To be the first to hear when these project’s mitigation become available, please sign up to our mailing list! Or if you would like to help us identify areas needing mitigation and thoughts on our future projects, please complete our developer engagement survey!
