In 2003 the Parish Council, after consultation with the community, published a ‘Parish Action Plan’ which set out a series of improvement actions for our community and the steps to achieving them. Eight years on, most have been achieved and it is time for a new plan. However, the world has also moved on in this period and the process of ‘planning’ at a local level has become more important. Parishes are now encouraged to have a ‘community led plan’ that sets out to identify the aspirations of the whole community and across the whole spectrum of community life.
How
do we want our village to look in the future?
What do we want to be doing more of as a community?
What should we be doing less of?
These are all the sort of questions that such a planning process will attempt to address. As a result of the Localism Act 2011, these plans will potentially be given a legal standing as views of the local community. They will have to be taken into account by our planning authority, Chichester District Council, when deciding how development should proceed in our area.
The Parish Council has initiated the Community Led Planning process setting up a Planning Working Group. Throughout this process we will be looking to engage our community and that goes for the working group as well. If you would like to help steer the Community Led Plan for Wisborough Green please make yourself known to the Parish Clerk on 701102 or email clerk@wisboroughgreenpc.org.
Our Plan will include
a number of elements:
Neighbourhood Plan -
focuses on future development; location, quantity and style.
Village Design Statement - how we would
like our village to look in the future.
Community Action Plan - other concerns
and ideas raised and how we can achieve actions.
To create our Plan, there will be a number of different consultations which you will be informed of through the Parish Council newsletter.
Stage One - November 2011 - Survey to all households
It’s difficult to plan for the future if you don’t know your starting point so we wanted to establish a ‘baseline’ of information gleaned from our community. A questionnaire was circulated to all households in November 2011 and 217 (34%) households responded. To learn more about the survey and results please click here.
Stage
Two - April 2012 - Consultation Event 'Wisborough Green Past, Present
and Future'
A consultation event was held in the Village Hall on 20th & 21st
April 2012. Results from the survey were fedback to the community to
start discussion about what this means for the future. More specific
consideration was given to planning matters such as the location of
any future housing development.
The community issues data
is now availabe to view.
Planning data to follow shortly.
CDC was impressed with the event and with the help of the Parish Council,
created a case study document to be provided to other Parish Councils
interested in holding a community consultation event. Click
here to view document.
Stage Three - June 2012 - Parish Council decide to go for full Neighbourhood
Plan status
Update as reported
in September 2012 Parish Council newsletter
Many of you
will have participated in our Parish consultation event in April and
the views and ideas you provided us with are now being used to develop
the future plans for Wisborough Green.
While we have been doing this, the new National Planning Policy Framework has been published by the Government which sets out how communities can influence the development of planning policy in their area. The key mechanism for doing this is a Neighbourhood Plan. Neighbourhood planning will allow communities, residents, employees and businesses, to come together through a local Parish Council and say where they think new houses, businesses and shops should go – and what they should look like.
Provided a Neighbourhood Plan is in line with National Planning Policy, with the strategic vision for the wider area set by the local authority, and with other legal requirements, local people will be able to vote on it in a referendum. If the Plan is approved by a majority of those who vote, then the local authority will bring it into force and it becomes part of planning policy.
At out June meeting the Parish Council decided that it should extend the current work it is doing on community planning to encompass all that is required to have, in time, a full blown Neighbourhood Plan for Wisborough Green. We have now applied to Chichester District Council for Neighbourhood Plan status. This application is now open for public comment (this consultation can be found by clicking here) to determine if the Parish Council is the appropriate body for leading the Neighbourhood Planning process. After a 6 week consultation period which will end on 30th August 2012 we will hopefully have confirmation that we have Neighbourhood Plan status.
All the work we have done to date is still valid in this process and there will be further opportunity for community involvement and consultation. So watch this space and the website for further information on the progress of Wisborough Green’s Neighbourhood Plan
Stage
Four - May 2013 - further consultation events
It’s now 11 months since the community consultation event ran over
two days in April 2012. So what has the Neighbourhood Plan group been
doing since then and particularly what have we been doing with all the
issues and ideas you put forward at that event?
Firstly just to reflect on the consultation event: Chichester District Council was impressed enough with the event that they commission us to write it up as a Case Study which is now being used with other communities who are just embarking on their own planning process. A copy of the case study can be found on the village website.
Since last April we have been
analysing the results and identifying where more information is required
to help us form a comprehensive plan. Three strands of work have emerged;
• Housing Development: Accepting that we are going to have to accommodate
some housing, we have been developing options regarding the type, number
and location for further consultation.
• Village Design: If we are going to have some new development what
would we want it to look like? How would it best fit in? A call to the
community to help with the assessment process for this work resulted in
17 people volunteering to help, training in assessment techniques and
the whole village surveyed in one month! Many thanks to everyone who helped.
• Sustainability Appraisal: This is an element required by Government
as part of the Neighbourhood Planning process. We need to understand the
impact that our future plans might have on the environment, community
and local economy and to show that we have taken measures to avoid or
minimise any negative impacts.
Whilst all this work has been going on we have been keeping a close eye
on the Government’s Neighbourhood Planning process. So far only
one community (Eden Valley in Cumbria) has successfully been through the
whole process, having had their plans approved by both the planning inspector
and the local community via a referendum. So whilst we are still in the
vanguard on Neighbourhood planning we are also learning from others as
this new process develops.
Next Steps
The three strands of work described above will all generate options which
we then wish to discuss further with our community. Therefore we are planning
another round of consultation in May this year. Please put the following
dates in your diaries:
• 14th May in the afternoon 2 - 4 pm
• 14th May in the evening 7-9 pm
• 22nd May in afternoon 2 - 4 pm
• 22nd May in the evening 7-9 pm
These will be workshop sessions with plenty of opportunity to discuss
the ideas and options that are emerging as part of our Neighbourhood Plan.
In the meantime there is one
other thing that we would like help with. It is likely that new housing
will be built in the village in the next few years. The village design
work helps identify what has gone before and the sort of design and styles
that are characteristic of the area. However design and style has developed
and changed over time and should continue to do so. What should new housing
look like? To help answer this question we would like to invite you to
send us photos of new houses or new housing development that you consider
to be of good design and style, and also the ones that you think are a
monstrosity, but do tell us why. These don’t have to be from Wisborough
Green. As you travel around the county or further afield please take your
camera with you and send photos to clerk@wisboroughgreenpc.org We will
then use these at the consultation workshops to help generate ideas for
our own village.