NDP Topics

Submitted by Iain-admin on Wed, 08/06/2022 - 12:15pm

The Topics being covered in the NDP are currently expected to be

  • Housing
  • Natural Environment
  • Built Environment, Design Code and sustainability
  • Transport 
  • Local Economy and Community Facilities

Papers are being written on each topic to inform the policies that we will recommend going forward in the NDP.

Progress on Topics

So the next phase is to prepare topic papers (evidence papers) on each of these five subjects.

Current progress

  1. I have had an interview with two people at Aecom (think of it as Locality) with regard to the technical help they are going to give us on an Topic Paper on Housing Need. I was very pleased to learn that they are basically going to do the work – so our role is to guide them, comment on the draft that they prepare and identify the proposed policies that we wish to extract from the evidence. We have shared with them our Character Appraisal and Survey Report. They usually complete in about 14 weeks – end August.
  2. Giorgio and Claire have produced a first draft paper (i.e. as tabled at our meeting on 16th May). James G has promised to get back to them with how to refine the work so that it is in the correct format for a Topic Paper and what further work will need to be undertaken to complete.
  3. Built Environment, design code and sustainability. Rupert, Clive and myself had a very useful session with Aecom last night where they explained the technical help they will be able to give us to prepare this Topic Paper – at least with regard to design codes (they prefer to call it design guidance). We gave them quite a lot of information about Ockley and our aspirations as well as sharing the Character Appraisal and Survey Report. They are reviewing how they can help and they will be conducting a site visit shortly. It is anticipated that we might involve the community perhaps by setting  up a pop-up stall somewhere (such as pavilion café) where we have a question board to obtain feed-back from residents. (exactly how this will be done is still to be decided).
  4. Transport – Gordon and James L-S have produced a first paper and James G has promised to get back to them with how it can be refined to the correct format and ideas for further work.
  5. Local economy – James G has provided an example of a Topic Paper on local economy with an appendix that includes a survey that was sent to local businesses. I think that this could also be extended to include questions on whether they would also be interested in using facilities such as hot-desking or conference rooms that we might be able to incorporate into the proposed Community Hub.