3.0 Policy context and strategic significance
3.1 Coventry Partnership
The Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) for Coventry represents partners from the public, private, community and voluntary sectors.
The Partnership for Coventry priority is “Growing the city and Tackling Poverty”. This priority cannot be addressed by one organisation on its own, but together partners bring their combined resources, energy, and creativity to meet the economic, social, and environmental needs of Coventry by working together to improve the ‘quality of life’ of residents and to improve the city as a place to live, work and play.
The Partnership for Coventry is well established in Coventry with good working relationships and effective participation of all partners. Partners recognised that joint ventures and cooperative and collaborative working will give better results, reduce duplication and lead to greater efficiencies. The Partnership will work together to deliver positive change within the city.
Priority:
- Growing the city and tackling poverty
Themes:
- Getting people into good jobs
- Raising Incomes and financial Inclusion
- Early action and communities
- Better understanding and evaluation
The Coventry Partnership feeds into the strategic direction for the council and contributes to all plans. It directly links with the Parks Service via the Feeding Coventry Group. The Park Service works with this group to promote sustainable food growing using community growing schemes such as at Glentworth Road and also by planting community orchards and fruiting hedges on our sites.
3.2 Council Plan 2016 – 2024
This plan sets out our vision for the city and our priorities for the next eight years - based on our commitments to the people of Coventry and the issues that residents have told the Council are the most important to them. It builds on the council’s previous plan and reflects the progress that has been made since this was written some five years ago.
“The Council has an overall budget of £ 233 million a year to deliver hundreds of services across the city. But in this we have £95 million a year less in central government support than we did in 2010. By the end of the decade, this will rise to £120million a year; the equivalent of £234 less to spend on every person living in Coventry.
These government spending cuts are, of course, a major challenge to us and will mean we will have to make some difficult decisions about services over the coming months.” (Leader, George Duggins, 2016)
The Coventry Plan sets out at a strategic level the key issues that need to be tackled in partnership by organisations throughout the city. Although based on the current Community Plan, the new Sustainable Community Strategy will have a longer timeframe and will look to 2026 to fit better with regional spatial and economic strategies and spatial planning timescales.
3.2.1 Coventry’s Local Plan 2011 - 2031
The Coventry Local Plan was formally adopted by the Council on 6 December 2017 following receipt of the Planning Inspector's Report. The Local Plan is the statutory document used by the Council to determine planning applications. The Local Plan including the adoption statements and all evidence examined in public can be found in the Library. Please use the interactive online policies map to view our Local Plan policies map.
Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs) that support the Local Plan and its policies can, if adopted, be found on the SPDs page. This page includes SPDs currently in draft form, which will also be listed on our consultation page.
View the Local Plan by topic, or view our Planning homepage if you are searching for a specific planning application or looking for other Development Management considerations. The City Centre Area Action Plan (CCAAP) has been in place following adoption on 6 December 2017. The CCAAP provides a blueprint for the development of the City Centre only across the next decade. It is a statutory document that provides planning policies to guide development in the City Centre.
Read the City Centre Area Action Plan.
The Inspector’s Reports, the Modified Final Plan, SA/SEA reports and Adoption Statement for all examined Plans are available online for public inspection free of charge.
3.3 Cov Culture
The Park Service is fully engaged in the cultural life of Coventry by virtue of its incidental use of sites by citizens of Coventry daily, by use of its sites for city scale and many local community events, it’s participation in the Positive Images Festival and, more recently, by its engagement with the City of Culture Team via our partnership and community engagement work.
The full Cultural Strategy can be supplied upon request and is available to download from the website Cov-Culture-2.pdf (culturechangecoventry.com)
3.4 Green Space Strategy
The Green Space Strategy has been developed to provide a strategic framework for the future management of Coventry City’s parks and green spaces. The strategy also addresses the requirements of Planning Policy Guidance Note 17(PPG17), which sets out government guidance in relation to the development of clear and transparent planning policies for parks, open spaces, outdoor sports, and recreational facilities.
The guidance calls for local authorities to set standards for parks and open spaces that recognise both the present level of provision and local people’s views and aspirations regarding the present and future provision.
The vision of Coventry City Council for green space is:
‘To provide attractive, high-quality accessible green spaces that are well maintained, safe, clean and are important to local people. This will be achieved through clear, open and robust planning policies that ensure that green space contributes to local character and plays an important role in everyday life of residents whilst supporting the regeneration of the city.’
The new Green Space Strategy will have much stronger links with the Sports strategy (2014-2024), as well as closer links with planning to maximise baseline information for our sites and forward planning of spend and includes a more focused element of community consultation as well as city-wide consultation.
3.5 Equality Strategy
Coventry City Council is committed to making a difference to the lives of the people of Coventry by improving equality of access to Council services and ensuring that our employment opportunities are fair and that our workforce reflects the demographics of our city. We intend to achieve this by challenging discrimination, harassment, and victimisation, promoting equality of opportunity and fostering good relations. As a Council and as a city, we have come a long way but, we are still determined to make improving equality of opportunity in Coventry, an integral part of all that we do by placing equality at the heart of the Council’s commitment to service quality and improvement. During these difficult financial times, we need to ensure that the decisions we make on how we allocate resources, how we design or redesign our services and how we enable access to Council services, are taken in the knowledge and understanding of how these decisions advantage or disadvantage any particular community. This is challenging. This Equality Strategy builds on the Council’s objectives for Coventry set out in the Council Plan and is the result of a robust consultation process with people who work, learn and live in Coventry, and focuses on those areas of inequality which impact most on the lives of local people. We will continue to embrace this approach, and focus on these key equality objectives and the things that matter to the people of Coventry. This will enable the Council to continue to make a very real difference to people’s lives and help to increase equality of opportunity in our city.
3.6 Site of Special Scientific Interest and Site of Importance for Nature Conservation
As the subject of centuries of agricultural change and three major phases of ornamental landscape design, there is very little natural about the Coombe Park landscape. However, both in spite of and because of its designed nature, the park has a wide range of semi- natural habitats which support a wealth of floral and faunal interest.
This diversity is a result of the combined effects of Capability Brown (naturalistic design, permitting nature to take its course) and of subsequent landscapers together with the site’s physical determinants (geology, soils, hydrology) and the management regimes, or lack of them, through the centuries.
Much of the site is covered by two wildlife designations Site of Special Scientific Interest and Site of Importance for Nature Conservation. The site is managed by a detailed Action Plan for each of 14 Character Areas and is subject to a Higher Level Stewardship Agreement, details of this agreement can be found in the supporting paperwork.
The site also works to Local Biodiversity Action Plans for the following: Barn Owl, Bats, Black Poplar, Crayfish, Farmland Birds, Great Crested Newt, Otter, Polecat, Song Thrush and Water Vole. Coombe Abbey Park has huge historical significance in the local area. Richard de Camville founded St Mary’s Abbey at Cumba just outside the village of Smite in 1150. The Cistercian abbey comprised a complex of buildings arranged in a standard formation around a cloister with the church unusually situated on the south side of the cloister due to the location of the Smite Brook. The monastery was relatively wealthy and by the 13th century had enclosed the adjacent villages of Upper and Lower Smite to create sheep pasture.
The monastery, accounted the richest in Warwickshire, was dissolved in 1539 and then for forty years passed through a succession of owners and tenants. The site was first granted to Mary, Duchess of Somerset and Richmond, who in turn conveyed it to John Dudley, later Duke of Northumberland. It then passed into the hands of the Earl of Warwick, reverted to the crown in 1557 and was sold to Robert Kelway, Surveyor of the Court of Wards and Liveries, who until 1578 let it to a Leicestershire merchant, Sir William Wigston. Robert Kelway died in 1581 and the property passed to his daughter who married John Harrington of Exton, Rutland.
Although it is likely that conversion of the monastery to a residence began in the 1550s, it was John Harrington who undertook major building work creating one of the most substantial houses in the county. He also laid out the first formal gardens in the late 16th century. John Harrington was created a baron in 1603 and from 1603 to 1608 served as a guardian to the daughter of James I, Princess Elizabeth, who was accommodated at Coombe. During her stay Harrington foiled an attempted kidnap of the Princess as part of the Gunpowder plot. She later married Prince Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate on the Rhine, who became monarch of Bohemia for a short time giving rise to Elizabeth’s popular title, the Winter Queen of Bohemia.
When Harrington died in 1613, Coombe descended to his son John, who died only six months later whereupon it passed to his sister Lucy, Countess of Bedford who sold it in 1622 to Elizabeth, widow of former Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Craven. Coombe passed to her son William who in 1627 became Baron Craven of Hampstead Marshall, Berkshire and Protector of the widowed Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. In 1634 Lord Craven obtained a licence for emparkment from Charles I to enclose 650 acres of demesne land. The Craven estates were sequestered under the Commonwealth but following their restoration in 1662 Lord Craven was created an Earl. Coombe was occupied by Lord Craven’s agent and godson, Sir Isaac Gibson, and then by the Earl’s cousin and heir, Sir William Craven. In 1682-9 William Winde rebuilt portions of the house for Lord Craven and throughout the century modifications and extensions were made to the existing formal gardens, work recorded by Kip’s engraving c1707. The property descended to the sixth Lord Craven who in 1771 commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the 17th century park around Combe Abbey. His work included the formation of a large serpentine lake, boundary belts and tree groups and buildings designed by him or his son-in-law Henry Holland with whom he had recently gone into partnership. These comprised East and West Lodges at new entrances to the park, a Menagerie near the lake, a boathouse, dog kennels and possibly Pump and Dove Cottages. The sixth Lord Craven’s wife gained notoriety by absconding to Europe with the Margrave of Anspach, whom she married in 1791 on the death of Lord Craven. In 1791 the seventh Baron Craven inherited ‘Combe’, and in 1801 was re-created Earl of Craven. The second Earl, who inherited ‘Combe’ in 1825, had a duck decoy created on the estate and may have been responsible for establishing a pheasantry on the Wrautums. He commissioned William Eden Nesfield to build a new east wing in 1866-72, while at the same time Nesfield’s father, William Andrews Nesfield, designed formal gardens to the south and west of the house. Lord Craven’s gardener William Miller was responsible for the design of the north and east gardens and the walled kitchen garden.
The third Earl Craven inherited ‘Combe’ in 1866, died in 1883, and was succeeded by the fourth Earl Craven who with his wife Cornelia, a wealthy American heiress, undertook some modernisation of the house and elaboration of the gardens. The gardens are recorded in two series of photographs for Country Life and through photographs taken by Lady Craven, herself a keen photographer. The fourth Earl Craven died in a yachting accident in 1921 and in 1923 the fifth Earl, in debt and unable to maintain the Abbey, put the property up for auction. The house contents were sold in a sale that lasted eight days and the estate was parcelled up into lots for auction, with the house and 120 acres of land going to John Gray, a Coventry builder. Gray proceeded to gut and demolish two thirds of the Abbey selling off many architectural items. Coventry businessman acquired various parts of the site, renaming the Menagerie the Woodlands and building Highfield, a private residence near the Menagerie. In 1952 the abbey itself was leased to the General Electric Company for a residential and training centre and during their tenure a swimming pool and tennis court were constructed in the gardens west of the house.
When Gray died in 1962 the property was sold to Coventry City Council who put in hand plans to create a public park. In 1966 Coombe Abbey Regional Park officially opened. The Countryside Act of 1968 allowed Coventry City Council to apply for designation as a Country Park, which was endorsed in 1970. Initially the abbey was empty and unused but in 1971 it was leased to a company called Historic Productions on a 21-year lease. On the termination of the lease the building was in a serious state of dilapidation and in order to save and restore the property it was offered publicly for expressions of interest in 1989. Coventry City Council in partnership with No Ordinary Hotels developed the Abbey complex as a hotel with a new visitor centre and access to the gardens and park north of the lake via a new causeway across the moat.
See Appendix 4 for detail of historical landscape significance and development.
