Husthwaite Neighbourhood Plan – almost ready!!
After literally years of work, we are very close to completing a consultation draft of the Husthwaite Neighbourhood plan. There have been delays this year for a number of reasons, primarily the cancellation of funding for neighbourhood plan groups, regardless of the stage they have reached and also illness/absence of key personnel. But we are now nearly there – currently making final revisions to policies and sorting photos, maps and diagrams to illustrate the text. We still have to obtain some informal feedback from North Yorkshire Council – better to know now rather than later if it has any major concerns – and then we can circulate to the Parish.
We are really looking forward to sharing the draft Plan with the local community as it is based on all the views and comments received over the last few years, particularly in the Parish Survey last year and the drop in events at the village hall. We hope you will be impressed but also critical and let us know if you have any concerns. Obviously there are limits to what we can do in our Plan as we have to comply with national and local planning policy but we hope that residents and businesses will nevertheless feel that the draft Plan does broadly reflect local aims and needs.
We will deliver a letter to each household in the Parish as soon as the Plan is ready to be reviewed – it will be available online and in paper form. There will also be announcements on the village website and by email. Instructions on how to comment will be included.
When the public funding programme was dismantled in June, a number of MPs spoke out against the decision including Dr Luke Evans who said: “Neighbourhood plans are not obstacles to progress; they are the architects of local consent. To dismantle them is to forget that true planning begins not in Whitehall, but in the beating hearts of our communities, which call these places home.”
We wholeheartedly agree with this which is why we are determined to see this project through to completion and with the community’s continued support we should be able to do that. The forthcoming consultation is the next key step and we are very much hoping for a good response.