The Ockley Neighbourhood Development Plan - News
Latest News - 2nd edition
You may be interested to hear the latest news on the development of our NDP plan
Progress on the evidence papers for the NDP is as follow:-
Housing Needs - we received a first draft of the paper from Aecom a couple of weeks ago and have sent back our comments. Generally it is a useful paper although we didn't fully understand some of their calculations. Hopefully we will receive a second draft shortly.
Natural environment - Giorgio and Claire are updating their draft paper taking account of the comments and ideas suggested by James G (our consultant)
Built environment, design codes and sustainability - Aecom visited Ockley a couple of weeks ago and spent the day looking at the sites in the FMV regulation 19 draft Local Plan and walking around the village. The idea essentially is to examine the characteristics of the parish with the idea of coming up with a set of principles that will inform future development. We anticipate a first draft of their paper shortly.
Transport - Gordon and James are reviewing their draft paper in the light of comments received from James G
Local economy - A survey is being circulated to the business community so that we can formulate the NDP to take account of the requirements of business for the future.
NDP Topics
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
Screening requests to MVDC
You will have seen the email that James G sent on Monday (23rd May) suggesting that we send two letters to MVDC asap to seek an opinion on whether we can leave out a Strategic Environment Assessment and a Habitat Regulation Assessment from our NDP. Lesley is in process of sending these to MVDC and we will circulate when available – together with MVDC’s response in due course.
Further to the above report we have now received clearance from MVDC in which they also confirm that clearance has been received from Natural England, the Environment Agency and Historic England. The response can be found in the document section under the title of Strategic "Environmental Assessment and Habitats Regulation Assessment Determination Report"
Website
I am about to ask Iain Gutteridge to design a website extension to the OPC website to provide a window on the NDP world for our residents. I am intending this to be relatively simple
There will be four sections
- Background
- Glossary
- News
- Document Library
Button to return to main OPC home page.
The section on Background will not change (or at least not much) but will provide a section on what an NDP is and why we are doing it.
The Glossary is where we can provide an explanation of different terms and concepts that might be used but may not be fully understood by the public (such as affordable housing, rural exception sites, CIL, etc.).
The section on News will provide a series of blogs on where we have got to and what everyone is doing – idea is to update this blog every week or two.
The Document Library will include all the documents that we are using such as Registration, Maps, Character Appraisal, Survey, Vision. The idea is that as we move forward this will become the Examination Document Library that will be used for the reg 14 consultation, the submission to MVDC and eventually the examiner.
I hope this is a useful review of actions being taken. Your comments will of course be welcome.