Community First and Common Places will provide an update on Community-Led Planning in the Community Area, the development of a Neighbourhood Plan and the relationship between these two processes.
Minutes:
Community First, the Rural Community Council for Wiltshire, and Common Places, a Social Enterprise supporting the development of resilient communities, delivered presentations regarding Community-Led Planning and the Neighbourhood Plan, which they were leading on respectively.
Community First: Community-Led Planning
Marion Rayner, Community Development Manager, and Belinda Fowler, Community Development Officer, provided an update on Community-Led Planning across the Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Community Area.
Community First was a charity that supported communities to create Community-Led Plans that would inform the Community Area Plan.
A Community-Led Plan was a strategy for the community for a five-year period. The plan covered all issues of concern within a community, including social, economic and environmental issues. The plan was designed to reflect the views of all sections of the community through a good process of consultation.
Community First offered direct support for steering groups, access to Community-Led Planning resources, assistance with coordination, new ideas and workshops.
In the Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Community Area, there were currently 10 out of the 12 parishes and towns involved in the Community-Led Planning process, and two plans were already complete.
Common Places: Neighbourhood Plan
Mark Goodman provided an overview of the Neighbourhood Plan process and how this applied to the Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Community Area.
A Neighbourhood Plan, as defined by the Localism Act 2011, was “a plan which set out policies (however expressed) in relation to the development and use of land”.
Once a Neighbourhood Plan had demonstrated its general conformity with the strategic policies of the Local Plan and was brought into force, the policies it contained took precedence over existing non-strategic policies in the Local Plan in that neighbourhood.
Common Places had been commissioned to lead on the development of a Neighbourhood Plan for the Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Community Area. The process was well underway and would soon be leading into a public consultation phase, to be followed by formal consultation.
Both Community First and Common Places were working together to maintain communication, share local knowledge, overcome challenges and facilitate understanding of the two separate but linked processes.
Following the presentations from Community First and Common Places, the following questions and comments arose:
· One of the real benefits of Neighbourhood Plans was identifying and dealing with common issues.
· All data was stored in digital format which made it easier to collate efficiently and create common databases.
· Common Places was funded to carry out its work directly through the client, which in this case was Wiltshire Council, and funding for the project had been received through DCLG.
· Community First was a registered charity and was part of a national network of Rural Community Councils. Community First’s funding for this work was received from DEFRA.
· The Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Area Board had also supported the process by agreeing to make funding available for parishes and towns seeking to embark upon the Community-Led Planning process.
· Parish councils were the qualifying bodies insofar as a Neighbourhood Plan was concerned. If a parish council chose not to participate in a Neighbourhood Plan for the Community Area as a whole, then that parish would not be included in the Neighbourhood Plan process which could then result in a ‘donut plan’ to exclude any parish(s) which did not participate.
A brief round-table exercise was held, and people were asked to identify what they felt could be the biggest challenges to developing the two planning processes. A list of the suggestions can be viewed at Appendix 1 to these minutes.
The Chairman congratulated Community First and Common Places for working so well in partnership together, and thanked them for attending the Area Board to deliver their presentations.