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2: A Profile of Poole

Setting

2.01 The Borough covers an area of just over 6,400 hectares (about 25 square miles) and enjoys an environment of remarkable richness and diversity. The town is most famous for its location on the northern shores of Poole Harbour, one of the largest natural features of its kind in the world. The Harbour is of ecological, recreational and commercial importance, a balance which, in many ways, characterises the town. Poole lies within the South East Dorset conurbation, which has an overall population of about 445,000 in 2001, and its setting is shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 - Setting of the Local Plan

2.02 To the south east lies Poole Bay, and it is this part of the coastline, principally at Sandbanks, which boasts one of the country’s finest recreational beaches, an annual winner of the Blue Flag award.

2.03 The resort town of Bournemouth shares a common boundary with the Borough to the east, whilst the northern boundary is formed by the River Stour, with Wimborne beyond. To the west lie Corfe Mullen and Upton. Further a field are the New Forest, Cranborne Chase and the Purbecks.

2.04 The rail link with Waterloo brings London within 112 minutes; Bournemouth (Hurn) International Airport is 10 miles from Poole Town Centre; and the Port offers direct links with Cherbourg and other continental ports. Road links have been considerably improved, particularly to London and eastwards along the south coast, via the M3 and M27 Motorways and the A31 Trunk Road. The A350, to Bristol, is less good and requires improvement.

2.05 The natural environment of Poole is characterised by lowland heathland which was once far more extensive than it is today. In Dorset, the area of heathland had declined by about 85% since the mid-eighteenth century, from about 40,000 hectares in 1750 to 6,000 hectares in 1978. Canford Heath, Upton Heath and scattered fragments to the north of Poole, and within the urban area, have been confirmed as part of the Dorset Heathlands Special Protection Area, Ramsar Site and candidate Special Area of Conservation. By the late 1970s, Canford Heath was the largest unbroken area of heathland in Dorset. Most of these heathland areas are Sites of Special Scientific Interest and have been confirmed as Special Protection Areas. They are a significant part of the unique environmental quality which, in approving the South East Dorset Structure Plan First Alteration (1990), the Secretary of State recognised as constraining the future outward growth of the conurbation. The Regional Planning Guidance for the South West confirms the Secretary of State’s view.

A Dynamic Town

2.06 There is evidence of Bronze Age human activity in the area and Poole was a centre of pottery production in Roman times. However, it was as a port, gaining trade from Wareham in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which established the town as a substantial settlement. It was also as a port, trading with Newfoundland in the eighteenth century, that Poole enjoyed the prosperity which supported much of the development which now characterises the Old Town near the Quay. Following the eighteenth century, the Port had a chequered history and, although nineteenth century rural depopulation resulted in new urban development, by 1881 the population stood at only 12,301.

2.07 Although the Port reached a low point in the years after the war, the Harbour being too shallow to accommodate modern shipping, suburban expansion continued, new residents being attracted by the quality of the local environment, so that by 1961 the population had risen to 92,111. Since the 1960s change has been rapid, the Council having taken the view that the Borough should not be allowed to become a narrowly based south coast retirement town. Policy-making since that time has been geared to ensuring that the Borough retained a well balanced population structure and a dynamic economic base. During this period, intervention in the land market has facilitated the implementation of these policies.

2.08 By 2001, the population had risen to 138,385 and during the preceding 30 years the housing stock grew from just over 30,000 units to about 59,000. The large new residential neighbourhoods of Creekmoor, Canford Heath, Merley, Bearwood and Talbot Village have been accompanied by community facilities and have provided a range of housing which has ensured that the Borough’s population age structure is much closer to the national average than the remainder of the sub-region.

2.09 Population growth has also been matched by economic expansion, the numbers in employment growing to 59,937 in 2002. In the 1960s prosperity was fuelled by growth in the manufacturing sector, whereas the 1980’s and 1990’s were characterised by expansion in the service sector as a number of major office based employers relocated to the area. Nevertheless, manufacturing remains important and a higher proportion of the local workforce are engaged in this activity than the country as a whole. The Port Authorities, too, have invested in new facilities on the southern side of Hamworthy and this has allowed rapid growth in cross-channel freight and passenger traffic, and Poole is now one of Britain’s busiest ports.

Poole Today

Population

2.10 Table 2.2 shows that, at the time of the 2001 Census, the usually resident population of the Borough was 133,288 and that, as noted above, the age structure is much closer to that of the country as a whole than Dorset or the conurbation. Minority ethnic groups (including those in white ethnic groups who did not classify themselves as British) represent 4.0% of Poole’s population. Forecasts for the period 2001-2011 show an overall increase in the size of population and also an ageing of the population. Whilst the number of adults aged 20-44 is set to decline slightly, a substantial increase in the number of people aged 45 or over is forecast. A more long term trend which looks set to continue is the decline in the average household size. In 1991, this stood at 2.31 for Poole but, by 2001, it had fallen to 2.30. It is expected that average household size will continue to fall in line with national forecasts even though the average household size for England and Wales in 2001 at 2.36 was higher than for Poole. This trend, together with the growth of the town, meant that there were nearly 1,100 more single person households in 2001 than there had been in 1991.

2.11 Over 40% of the population of Canford Heath West, Canford Heath East and Hamworthy West is aged under 30. The wards with the highest proportion of their resident population aged 65 and over are Canford Cliffs, Parkstone, Penn Hill, Poole Town and Broadstone.

2.12 The main concentration of households without a car is within Poole Town Ward where 33.9% of households do not have a car. At the other extreme, in Merley and Bearwood and Broadstone wards the proportion of households without a car is 8.6% and 10.3% respectively.

The Local Economy

2.13 Like the age structure, the Borough’s local economy is more balanced than that of South East Dorset as a whole. This is illustrated in Table 2.5.

2.14 The relative importance of manufacturing has declined since the 1960’s but, providing jobs for 17.4% of the workforce in 2002, it remains more prominent than in the national economy as a whole. Major employers include Cryovac Sealed Air, Hamworthy KSE, Hamworthy Heating, Hamworthy Combustion, Kerry Foods, Precision Disc Casting, Siemens, Southernprint, Sunseeker, Ryvita, and Zellweger Analytics Limited.

2.15 During the 1970s, Poole’s location within the South West Region, with its less restrictive regional planning policies, attracted companies wishing to relocate from London. These included employers within the banking and financial sector, such as Barclays Bank (now Barclays International), the Frizzell Insurance Group (now Liverpool Victoria), and American Express Bank.  Other important service sector employers include Link House Publications, the national headquarters of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Fitness First HQ, Bournemouth University and Poole Primary Care Trust. Tourism is also important to the local economy and was worth an estimated £158m in 2002.

2.16 The expansion of the service sector allowed the Borough to weather fairly well the recession of the early 1980s so that, by 1989, the unemployment rate had fallen to 2.6%. The more recent recession did have a greater impact.  However the overall workforce based unemployment rate now stands at 1.1% with male unemployment at 1.5% (March 2004).

A Place to Live

2.17 During the recent period of rapid expansion the Central Area of Poole has been greatly enhanced by a combination of conservation, redevelopment and environmental improvement. Modern shopping facilities are provided in the Dolphin Shopping Centre, built in phases between 1969 and 1984, with a second refurbishment due in 2004/5, and the High Street has been pedestrianised. This has been accompanied by a recent railway station, bus station and the provision of car parking facilities.

2.18 The Arts Centre (now The Lighthouse) was completed in 1978 and incorporates theatre, concert hall, cinema, teaching and gallery space and is the home of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. These new facilities have been accompanied by an active programme of restoration in the Old Town, Quay and High Street Conservation Areas. The Quay, in particular, attracts summer visitors in great numbers, whilst retaining the air of a working port.

2.19 Elsewhere in the Town, a wide variety of recreational facilities have been provided, ranging from the commercial multi-use leisure centre at Tower Park to Upton Country Park, on the shores of Holes Bay. However, it is Poole’s natural setting which is its greatest recreational asset, access to the countryside combining with extensive opportunities for water borne sports in the Harbour and Bay.

2.20 Notwithstanding the growth which has taken place and the improvements which have been made, communication weaknesses and a low profile have combined to mitigate against Poole establishing itself as a prestigious location for quality investment. The availability of land for development, particularly in the Central Area, provides the opportunity to address this problem in formulating the Local Plan strategy (Chapter 3).

Table 2.1 Population 2001

(Source: 2001 Census)

Table 2.2 Population in Poole

Age Group	2001		2006		2011		2016
	(No.)	%	(No.)	%	(No.)	%	(No.)	%
0-4	7 205	5.2	7 243	5.2	7 543	5.4	8 195	5.7
5-14	16 796	12.1	15 780	11.4	15 617	11.1	16 236	11.4
15-29	22 164	16.0	23 407	16.9	25 639	18.2	26 214	18.4
30-44	29 752	21.5	28 881	20.8	26 513	18.9	25 776	18.1
45-64	34 363	24.8	37 372	26.9	40 315	28.7	41 361	29.0
65+	28 105	20.3	28 879	20.8	30 735	21.9	33 699	23.6
	138 385		141 562		146 359		151 481

(Source: 2001 Census and Borough of Poole Population Projections)

Table 2.3 Housing Tenure

Tenure	England & Wales %	Dorset Sub-Region %	Poole %
Owner Occupied	68.9	75.2	79.1
Private Rented	11.9	13.3	9.9
Registered Social Landlords	5.9	7.1	3.5
Local Authority	13.2	4.4	7.5

(Source: 2001 Census)

Table 2.4 Car Ownership

(Source: 2001 Census)

Table 2.5 - Employment Structure 2002

Sector	Poole (TTWA*) %	Dorset %	Great Britain %
Agriculture	0.1	0.4	0.9
Energy and Water	1.1	0.6	0.8
Manufacturing	16.8	13.4	13.4
Construction	3.3	4.0	4.5
Services	78.7	81.7	80.5

(Source: Annual Business Inquiry Analysis, ONS - 2002)
* TTWA: Travel-to-work area