Neighbourhood Plan update

Audlem Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee
Update – December 2014

There have now been 3 meetings of the Steering Committee during which we have been discussing how to best organise ourselves, getting to grips with what the potentially complex process is all about and what the priorities are, so as to be able establish the framework for developing Audlem's Residents First Neighbourhood Plan.

Anyone who has seen a Neighbourhood Plan document will no doubt appreciate the tremendous amount of detail and effort that is involved, so as you can imagine quite a bit of time has been spent merely absorbing all that is involved and formulating an initial set of actions.

One of these actions has been to create a new website specifically for the Neighbourhood Plan – this contains a lot of relevant information which you can access by clicking here.

At the last meeting on December 3rd we concluded what we believed were the key issues that needed to be addressed by the plan, based on historical discussions and surveys around the village. We then established working groups to go away and look at each of these key issues.

• Housing Needs
• Potential Sites & site allocations
• Development design
• Employment potential
• Issues for inclusion in updated Parish Plan

Our intention is that each working group formulates sets of actions so that we can then present these to Audlem residents, early in the New Year, to gain consensus that we are on the correct track.

The next progression has been to put together a new Housing Survey that we need to be completed by as many residents as possible. Whilst we have the results of the Survey done 2 years ago, we have to perform a more up to date one using a template sanctioned by Head of Planning at CEC.

Without this our evidence base, a crucial element of the Plan, could be flawed.

We are targeting early January for this to be available, so we will be calling on as many of you as possible to help post these to every Audlem household!!

Local Plan

A growing concern emerged as to whether the Residents First strategy that Audlem agreed to adopt back in July had been impacted by the recent announcements regarding the less than favourable report from the Planning Inspectorate of Cheshire East's Local Plan.

To help clarify this we had a meeting with Tom Evans, Planning Officer at Cheshire East and Rachel Bailey, our Councillor, on December 8th.

It was made quite clear at this meeting that the problems with the Local Plan had indeed created uncertainty, especially as regards the number of homes that Cheshire East needed to supply, although any increase would probably only impact Audlem slightly.

It was also made quite clear that the Residents First strategy was still the best and quickest way forward to help Audlem establish some degree of protection against further unwelcome speculative development in future.

Discussion on the level of residential development to match the anticipated growth within Cheshire East indicated that over a 20-year period from 2010 a total of approximately 100 additional dwellings should be allocated.

Almost 60 of these are already taken account of with existing approved applications, including Wednesday's decision by Cheshire East, that the Heathfield Road Development is approved.

Should the Gladman proposal for 115 houses at Little Heath be approved, whilst this clearly means that we have potential exceeded our target number, it in no way reduces the urgency of creating the Plan to create a real defense against future development proposals.

A key element of Residents First strategy is the Site Allocations and Development Policies Document. Further meetings are taking place with Cheshire East as to the best way to handle this sensitive issue. This may include inviting all local landowners to put forward proposals for any land they may wish to have considered for development over the next 20 years.

In summary, our next immediate major activities will be:

A Housing Survey

A Public Meeting in January 2015 to:

• Update residents on progress
• Gain consensus on the key issues

A Drop-in Workshop in February 2015 to:

• Share the results of the Housing Survey with residents
• Provide an opportunity for residents to identify potential sites
• Provide an opportunity for landowners to come forward
• Allow residents to update the Steering committee on their views about developments in the area

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