Building for growth, planning for nature: Lessons from Bradford

Active travel infrastructure with integrated SuDS, Hall Ings, Bradford. © SWECO

A collaborative approach, aligning strategic ambition with local needs, supports a landscape-led approach to both growth and nature recovery in one of the UK’s most rapidly expanding cities.

The UK’s planning system is undergoing its most significant transformation in a generation, with the government’s commitment to building 1.5 million homes in England setting the stage for rapid development. However, this ambition raises a fundamental challenge: how do we ensure that economic growth and housing expansion do not come at the cost of our landscapes, biodiversity and communities?

Bradford provides a compelling case study in this national debate. As one of the UK’s youngest, most diverse, and fastest-growing cities, it faces acute pressure to deliver housing while safeguarding its rich natural assets, including the South Pennines’ designated nature reserves and Special Protection Area. Through examining planning decisions in Bradford, and linking them with wider regional strategies such as Nature North, we can explore how a landscape-led approach, grounded in partnerships and collaboration, ensures that development supports both people and nature.

Bradford’s commitment to a landscape-led approach is not just about shaping places – it’s about shaping healthier lives. By embedding nature into city planning, Bradford’s landscape team are creating sustainable, healthy and equitable communities.

The challenge of balancing growth and nature

Bradford’s emerging local plan will seek to set out an ambitious vision for delivering homes, jobs and infrastructure while protecting and enhancing the environment. However, as in many parts of the country, this vision is tested by the tension between housing demand and the need to protect green spaces.

The revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the upcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill place increasing emphasis on ‘brownfield-first’ development, but in areas like Bradford, viable brownfield land is limited. Developers often look to the green belt for expansion, which raises concerns about urban sprawl, biodiversity loss and increased flood risk. And the pressure is not only for housing and commercial growth, but also renewable energy developments such as large wind and solar farms or battery storage facilities in sensitive landscapes like the South Pennines.

A landscape-led approach offers a way forward. By designing developments that integrate nature-based solutions (such as green corridors, wetlands and urban tree planting), and by responding to local landscape character, Bradford can deliver housing and other types of development that enhance rather than erode the natural environment.

Nature North: A regional vision for growth and green recovery

Nature North, a collaboration of environmental and economic partners, advocates for nature-led regeneration across the North of England. Its strategy aligns with national ambitions for economic growth but emphasises that investment in the environment should go hand in hand with development.

The relationship between Nature North and Bradford’s planning framework is key. The city’s strategic location, at the heart of a region rich in natural assets, positions it as a prime example of where nature recovery can be integrated into economic and housing growth. Through Nature North’s vision and investment priorities, Bradford can:

– Prioritise nature recovery in development – ensuring that new housing contributes to biodiversity gain and climate resilience

– Unlock funding and partnerships – working with landowners, businesses, and environmental organisations to implement landscape-scale restoration

– Enhance green infrastructure (GI) networks – connecting urban areas with surrounding natural landscapes, improving access to nature for communities.

Local plans, landscape-led approaches, and partnerships

Bradford is already demonstrating how a landscape-led approach based on Nature North’s strategy can shape the city’s future. The council is taking proactive steps to embed this regional framework across a range of different planning scales, including:

– Bradford Local Plan: The council’s work on a new local plan is taking a landscape-led approach from the outset. It seeks to ensure connectivity of green spaces and other important GI assets through new development. This work is supported by an updated Landscape Character Assessment and a Green and Blue Infrastructure Strategy that set the high-level context for a landscape-led approach to inform the policies in the local plan and choice of development sites.

– Homes and Neighbourhoods: A guide to designing in Bradford. This supplementary planning document guidance aligns with Nature North’s call for nature-integrated development, to ensure that housing projects actively contribute to GI.

– Transforming Cities Fund: A recently opened multi-million pound scheme that supports Nature North’s ambition for greener urban centres by introducing new public spaces, tree planting and active travel routes.

– Bradford City Village: A council-led scheme, working in partnership with developer Muse, Homes England and Legal & General, to deliver a vision for a new sustainable neighbourhood of up to 1,000 homes.

– Southern Gateway regeneration area: 140 hectares of underutilised commercial space on the southern edge of the city centre. The site offers one of the largest regeneration opportunities in the UK.

– Ilkley Flood Alleviation Scheme: Using tree planting and river restoration to reduce flood risk and deliver ecological enhancement, this scheme exemplifies Nature North’s emphasis on landscape-led water management, using nature-based solutions to address climate resilience and biodiversity loss.

These projects highlight how a collaborative approach – engaging environmental organisations, developers, government agencies, local businesses, and regional bodies like Nature North – can significantly strengthen landscape-led development.

Strengthening local planning capacity

Despite these ambitions, local planning authorities face significant resource constraints. Cuts to local government funding have reduced the capacity of planning teams, making it difficult to fully implement forward-thinking strategies. Bradford’s experience reflects a wider national issue: how can local authorities be better resourced to deliver high-quality, sustainable development?

One solution lies in strengthening the role of landscape professionals within the planning system. By embedding landscape-led approaches early in the planning process, we can ensure that new housing developments contribute positively to the local environment, enhance biodiversity and promote health and wellbeing.

Aligning planning policy with industrial strategy and transport investment

For a truly sustainable approach to growth, planning policy cannot operate in isolation. There is a pressing need to ensure that the planning reforms introduced by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) are aligned with the strategies of other government departments such as the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department for Transport. For example, the promotion of investment in green industries by DBT should be directly linked to spatial planning frameworks that prioritise sustainable land use. This will integrate economic growth policies with landscape-led development principles to ensure that new development enhances both local character and environmental resilience.

At present, planning policy remains largely reactive to market forces, rather than proactively shaping the kind of development that balances economic, social and environmental priorities. Bradford’s partnership approach offers a template for national policy, demonstrating how growth and nature recovery can be integrated from the outset.

Devolution and the future of regional and strategic planning

The role of devolution in shaping planning policy is critical. The new West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) has increasing control over regional investment, yet strategic spatial planning powers remain limited compared to devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales.

WYCA is already the responsible body for strategic policy such as the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, and it has produced a Climate and Environment Plan in response to the climate emergency. Bradford is aligning local development projects and strategies with these goals.

However, to maximise the benefits of a landscape-led approach, greater powers should be devolved to regional authorities like WYCA, to:

– Develop regional green infrastructure strategies, ensuring that nature recovery is embedded into long-term planning

– Coordinate cross-boundary nature-based solutions, especially for flood resilience, habitat restoration, and active travel networks

– Secure sustained funding for green regeneration initiatives, linking economic growth with environmental enhancement

A fully integrated approach, where local and regional planning decisions align with national strategies like Nature North, and sectoral policies from DBT and MHCLG, must be the ambition. This would ensure that landscape-led regeneration is not simply a local ambition, but a core element of national economic and environmental policy.

A future vision for Bradford and beyond

Bradford’s approach demonstrates that growth and nature restoration do not have to be at odds. Through a combination of strategic planning, investment in nature recovery and a commitment to high-quality design, the city can be a model for sustainable development in the UK.

For this vision to succeed, planning reforms must empower local and regional authorities with the funding, skills and flexibility to make informed decisions. The new planning system must recognise that economic growth should not come at the expense of our landscapes and communities: it should work with them.

The new planning system should recognise that economic growth should be delivered by working alongside communities and landscapes to maximise benefits to the environment, health and the economy.

Cllr Alex Ross-Shaw, Portfolio Holder – Regeneration, Planning & Transport at Bradford Council

Bradford’s experience highlights the importance of a landscape-first approach to planning. If properly resourced and integrated into policy, this approach, supported by regional strategies and strengthened by devolution, can help shape not just a more sustainable Bradford, but a greener, more resilient future for our communities across the UK.

Saira Ali FLI is Team Leader of Bradford and Metropolitan District Council Landscape Design and Conservation Team

Read ‘Investing in Nature for the North: A Strategic Plan for a Nature Positive Regional Economy’ at www.naturenorth.org.uk