Drafting the Neighbourhood Development Plan is the central and most crucial task of the project. It flows from the community consultations undertaken through the Your Community Your Future events and the residents’ questionnaires.
The work of drafting the Neighbourhood Development Plan commenced in August 2014. This is in three main phases:
1. Preparation and consultation on an initial ‘issues and options’ paper: Our Emerging Plan (August-October 2014).
2. Preparation of the first complete draft Plan for consideration by Council (initial draft October 2014-February 2015, revised draft approved by Council 15 July 2015, following modifications to Core Strategy).
3. Statutory ‘Regulation 14’ Consultation on the draft Plan (1 August to 15 September 2015).
Our Emerging Plan
In August 2014 the Steering Committee started the work of considering the results of the questionnaire data reported on by Data Orchard. This led to the development of Our Emerging Plan, a consultation document asking for residents’ responses about a vision and objectives for our community, and issues and options for the Plan.The document set out a vision for the future, with issues and options which might form the basis of our emerging NDP. A short response sheet was included asking for the reactions of residents to the proposals so far:
Our Emerging Plan Response sheet
The document and response sheet were again delivered to every household by our team of distributors in October 2014.
The replies were collected by the distributors, and just under 70% of households responded by the deadline of 19 October.
In parallel with this, three drop-in events were held where anyone could call in to meet members of the Committee and discuss the contents of the document. These were held in Risbury Village Hall on Thursday 16 October 2014, Stoke Prior Village Hall on Friday 17 October 2014, and at Humber Close in Steen’s Bridge on Saturday 18 October 2014. A total of 64 people attended the events, and their comments and suggestions are included in the summary of comments from the response sheets.
October events poster Humber Close 18 Oct event flyer
A summary of the responses to the consultation was reported to the Steering Committee on 28 October 2014 and published:
Our Emerging Plan consultation summary
The draft Plan
With the help and advice from a professional Planning Consultant, the Steering Committee produced the first draft of the final Neighbourhood Plan by January 2015. This was based on the proposed policies Our Emerging Plan, taking into account the views of residents.
A Neighbourhood Development Plan is a statutory planning document, so must be concerned with issues relevant to ‘development’ which is subject to planning controls. Not everything raised during the consultations is therefore appropriate to include in the Plan’s policies, even though some of them are major concerns (for example highways maintenance and broadband). These issues will be tackled outside of the planning policies of the NDP, by action to be overseen by the Parish Council over the coming months and years in a separate Parish Action Plan, and an Annexe in the Plan gives an overview of this.
The first complete draft Plan was completed by the Steering Committee and approved by the Group Parish Council at a meeting in January 2015. However, revisions were required to this draft following modifications proposed to the Core Strategy (which arose from the Inspector’s recommendations on inspection of the Core Strategy in February 2015). These revisions were completed by June 2015, and approved by Council on 15 July 2015.
Consultation on the draft Plan
The draft Neighbourhood Development Plan is published for public consultation on 1 August 2015. The consultation closed on 15 September 2015. This consultation included a copy being delivered to every household in the Group Parish.
Following the consultation, amendments to the Plan were prepared by the Steering Committee, and the amended proposed Neighbourhood Development Plan will be considered by Council at its meeting on 18 November 2015, to decide to submit the Plan to Herefordshire Council under Regulation 15 of the NP Regulations.