6.36 National Planning Policy Guideline 8: Town Centres and Retailing (NPPG 8), recognises the importance of town centres and the potential threat to them from out-of-centre development. It strongly urges measures to protect and enhance the vitality and viability of traditional centres as a contribution to sustainable development. The prime instrument for supporting this aim is the sequential approach which states that, in selecting sites for new retail development, planning authorities and developers should give first preference to town centre sites, followed by edge-of-centre sites and, only then, by out-of-centre sites. This is supported by a series of eleven criteria for judging proposals that are not consistent with the Development Plan. Originally aimed at retail developments, the sequential approach has been extended to other key town centre uses such as commercial leisure.

6.37 NPPG 8 is supplemented by Planning Advice Note 59: Improving Town Centres (PAN 59), which gives best practice advice on many aspects of town centre improvement and management. There are also strong links between NPPG 8 and NPPG 17, the latter emphasising that development should be sited where there is a choice of transport and should not be dependent predominantly on access by car.

6.38 The themes of sustainable development and support for Town Centres are promoted by the Joint Structure Plan. They seek to steer major retail development to locations in, or adjoining, existing centres, except where it can be shown that no such location is available.

6.39 In their scope and intent, the proposals and policies put forward in the Plan are consistent with NPPG 8 as well as with the Joint Structure Plan.