Click here to see the potential new housing sites for Darley Dale released 29th April 26.
Settlement Hierarchy Tier 2 status – Tiers 1 & 2 get a higher proportion of final building quantity
Infrastructure viability – Can services and facilities, like sewage drainage cope with more houses?
Employment opportunities – Do we really need new houses for new Darley Dale jobs?
Open Space protection – Is this land really needed to enable more development?
Settlement Hierarchy
Once the initial housing need calculations are finished, the settlement hierarchy is used to apportion housing to achieve a total distribution across the district of the housing need figure. The higher the tier status, the greater the expectation to contribute to higher house building allocations toward the final target.
Matlock, Wirksworth and Ashbourne are the largest settlements with the most sustainable services, facilities, connectivity and employment opportunities, and are designated Tier 1.
Darley Dale has been designated a ‘Service centre’ and designated Tier 2 as it has less facilities than Matlock, Wirksworth and Ashbourne, however its A6 connectivity sets it above the remaining Tier 3+ villages and hamlets in the district.
There are several linked components to a settlement’s tier status including size, population, services/facilities, transport accessibility, employment, self-containment and sustainability.
In 2025, ahead of the 2026 Local Plan Review, Derbyshire Dales District Council (DDDC) carried out a reassessment of the settlement hierarchy of the district. Darley Dale’s situation was deemed to be unchanged since the current Local Plan was adopted in 2017 and was therefore not reassessed and remained as a Tier 2 Service Centre, and still the only Tier 2 settlement in the Derbyshire Dales district.
As there is an expectation for a Tier 2 settlement to accept a proportionally higher allocation of new house building over the next 15 years or so than the Tier 3 villages, Darley Dale Town Council (DDTC) examined the 2025 reassessment report. It found that there were changes in the components used to make the original Tier 2 designation when deciding not to reassess Darley Dale’s status that could imply inconsistent treatment of Darley Dale.
Two of these inconsistencies relate to:
- The population figure used
- The employment opportunity assumption
As the settlement hierarchy status directly affects the proportion of the district’s housing target, its importance can’t be understated and DDTC will therefore query the rationale of it being omitted from the reassessment in 2025, highlighting the inconsistencies it found and request a reassessment before the drafting of the new Local Plan.
Accepting that the A6 connectivity make a downgrade to tier 3 unlikely, DDTC would request reducing Darley Dale’s housing quota if Tier 2 status is retained, based on the criteria cited for not being reassessed in 2025.
Infrastructure Viability
Part of the Tier 2 settlement status deems a community to have a degree of self-containment, implying that residents don’t need to travel to fulfil their needs. Darley Dale has a hospital, a health centre, 3 small convenience stores, a post office, a community centre, a petrol station and a primary school. The nearest large supermarkets are however in Matlock or Bakewell and the nearest retail park is in Chesterfield, all requiring transport to access them.
In the 2021 census there were a total of around 2,680 houses in the Darley Dale parish of which around 1,900 were in the built-up area along the A6. If, for example, the new Local Plan places a requirement on Darley Dale to build 100 houses per year, an extra 1,500 houses would be built over the following 15 years. This would nearly double the number of houses currently in the built-up area.
Would the existing services and facilities be sufficient to support this and if not, and new facilities are to be built, where would they be built within Darley Dale to maintain it’s self-containment component of Tier 2 status?
Transport links are another factor that elevates Darley Dale to Tier 2 and this is primarily due to the A6 road which runs through the built up area, connecting Darley Dale to Matlock and further to Derby to the east, and Bakewell leading to Stockport and Manchester to the west.
Direct bus services are fairly regular between Matlock, Darley Dale and Bakewell, less regularly to Sheffield, but no direct route exists to the nearest retail parks in Chesterfield.
Darley Dale has no rail links other than a volunteer run heritage part-time service between Northwood and Matlock.
Flooding, particularly surface water pooling on local roads appears to be increasing year on year in Darley Dale. Pooling is being seen in places not seen before. What is causing this?
- Is it due to a capacity issue with the water drainage system?
- Are underground streams being altered by new housing developments?
To try and understand the extent of flooding and any patterns, Darley Dale Town Council will conduct a survey of residents to learn about their flood experiences. The results will feed into the formal reply to the Local Plan Review
For Darley Dale, No 11 Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) is a major discharge point into the River Derwent near Oaker/Darley Dale. The 2024 spill data explicitly attributes the high frequency/duration to “Not Asset Maintenance – Hydraulic Capacity”. This classification from Severn Trent/Environment Agency records means the infrastructure lacks sufficient capacity to handle peak flows (rainfall + sewage) without overflowing, rather than issues like blockages or poor maintenance.
In 2024 there were 91 ‘spills’ (untreated sewage pumped into the River Derwent) from N0 11 CSO totalling a staggering 818 hours. There were even more in 2023. Sewage is pumped into the river to prevent it backing up into properties when ground water ingress overwhelms the system, and there are 3 main causes for this:
- Intense or prolonged rainfall
- Blockages, root intrusion or maintenance issues
- Population growth or increased connections (new developments)
As Severn Trent have confirmed that these high levels are not a maintenance issue then these unacceptable levels of pumping sewage into the River Derwent is either due to increased rainfall, increased connections from new houses or a combination of both, the latter being the most likely.
It follows that if the system is at capacity it should have no further new connections from new housing developments until its capacity has been increased otherwise the raw sewage pumping into the Derwent will only exacerbate.
Darley Dale Town Council has requested information from Severn Trent Water, responsible for foul water/ sewage services, to better understand the foul water connectivity of the newer housing developments with the local CSOs.
Employment Opportunities
A buoyant job market attracts new workers and housing them in close proximity to the workplace drives a need for new houses. Employment opportunities were seen as healthy in the 2025 Settlement Tier Reassessment by DDDC and the report named the Molyneux Business Park as a major employer. When asked in March 2026, Mr E Byam-Cooke who owns the warehousing on the Molyneux site, suggested that whilst the number of companies renting space had stayed roughly the same over the last 3 years, the number of employees per company had reduced. Similarly Ms Lloyd, owner of Stancliff House on the site suggested a similar situation for the office block.
With Forged Solutions Group, the largest employer in Darley Dale comprising 5 companies between the UK and USA, showing an increase in employees of around 22 in the year 2023-2024, it is not known how the 22 jobs were split across the 5 companies.
Darley Dale Town Council feels therefore that it is not unreasonable to query the health of the job market in Darley Dale which in turn raises a question over the need for new housing for the influx of new workers. To try to understand this better DDTC are conducting a survey of residents of new houses in Darley Dale to ask why they bought a new house in Darley Dale, where they work and how they travel. The results will feed into DDTC’s formal reply to the Local Plan Review.
Open Space Protection
Darley Dale is a unique and special place that has a strong character. This character is drawn from the way the various settlements that make up Darley Dale relate to both the landform and their landscape setting. Visual and physical connections with the landscape are a key defining element that gives residents and visitors to the area a memorable experience. Locally distinctive development patterns and building styles add to this sense of place.
The future of Darley Dale needs to be carefully managed to ensure that this sense of uniqueness isn’t eroded over time. The green wedges and spaces that separate the settlements in Darley Dale form ‘the Darleys in the Dale’ and need to be protected by policy against coalescence. Not only do they serve to separate settlements, but they also soften the views from the Peak District National Park, enhancing its setting and helping embed Darley Dale into a green landscape backdrop.
Several sites in the area offer the opportunity for future development in locations that are beneficial to, rather than damaging to the character and identity of the area.
Policy PD5 Landscape Character, or related policies on character, appearance, or visual amenity have been cited as a reason (either primary or contributory) in the decision notices or reports to refuse planning applications.
Policy PD10 was introduced specifically to protect the landscape character and the Darley Dale views to and from the Derwent Valley, and to prevent coalescence between Matlock and Darley Dale. The policy states that the District Council will resist development proposals that threaten the open spaces identified on the policy’s map.
This review is carried out ahead of DDDC’s publication of the emerging Local Plan which will identify potential development sites in Darley Dale, and this review will therefore be re-visited to assess the District Council’s proposed sites.