Purpose

To approve the attached Consultation Draft Shopfront Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for the purposes of public consultation.

Decision

It is recommended that the Portfolio Holder approves the attached Consultation Draft Shopfront Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for the purposes of public consultation.

Reasons for the decision

The reasons for the recommendation are:
a)To provide a clear document which sets out design requirements for shopfront designs.
b)To comply with statutory requirements and to publicise the consultation draft document.

Alternative options considered

An alternative option would be to approve the draft SPD as informal planning guidance which could be undertaken without consultation. However, this would result in it having less weight in terms of decision making.
Another alternative option would be to not proceed with adopting the new Shopfront SPD. This would mean relying on existing local plan policies which refer to design in more general terms and so are less able to guide shopfront design.