Minutes:
A presentation was given to the meeting by Cllr Henry Clark of Peakirk Parish Council giving an update on what progress has been made on the pilot project. The key points were:
· Deeping Gate Parish Council, Glinton Parish Council, Northborough Parish Council and Peakirk Parish Council have all had their applications to become Neighbourhood Planning areas approved.
· These Parishes will apply for grants to assist with this from Locality with Peakirk already having applied for almost £7000.00 in grant money.
· Steering group has been established to share information.
· Individual plans to be established at Individual Parish working groups
· Currently seeking professional assistance on matters such as drawing up and analysing surveys, communication, public engagement, publish the plan and the consultation process
· Areas with a Neighbourhood Plan will receive a higher Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) than areas that don’t
· Possible topics included in a plan will be down to the individual Parish but might include Schools, Recycling, Energy, Environment, Housing, Traffic, Cemeteries
· It is hoped that plans for the approved areas could be in place by July 2014
The following questions were put to Cllr Clark:
How much grant money would be required to produce a plan?
The maximum amount that can be applied for is £7000.00 per plan and Peakirk has applied for approximately £6984.00 as we have estimated that it will cost around this figure to do a proper job with professional assistance.
Would it be viable for every Parish Council to apply for this grant; would there be enough money to go round?
We are effectively pioneering the process at the moment and it could well be that after the first wave of applications have been processed lessons will be learnt thus, potentially making the second wave of applications cheaper.
Where are the grants being applied from?
It is an organisation called Locality which is contributed to by various public and professional bodies.
Even if you have a Neighbourhood Plan in place it must conform to PCC’s Area Plan so is there any point in applying, especially in urban Parish’s?
Whilst it is true that you can’t do anything that contradicts the Area Plan you can add details like the number of houses to be allocated to a plot or the addition of affordable housing. Having a plan could benefit the Parish by allowing them access to more CIL money than if they did not have a plan.
Will these plans allow for recommendations for the future beyond the duration of the current city plan?
Can’t see why you shouldn’t attempt to look to the future past the current local plan. If you do your own plan it will help to avoid having things done to you unexpectedly.
We did a Parish plan three years ago does this mean that we will need to do another one?
The plan that you put into place three years ago will have no influence on planning applications as it didn’t have any statutory basis. You can take a lot of what you did and imbed that into your new plan.