The Steering Group are working towards the Regulation 14 Public Consultation of the Gerrards Cross Draft Plan, the planned launch will start on 3rd July and continue until 27th August 2023. A summary leaflet will be delivered to each household and a full version available on this website from the above date.
Steering Group Meeting with our consultants Plan-et at 9.15am via Zoom. This meeting dealt specifically with preparations and actions needed to bring the final Draft Plan to the public via the Regulation 14 consultation. – for details see full minutes.
Steering Group Meeting 10am in Room 2 at The Memorial Centre. The main purpose of this meeting was to carry out a review of the just received Pre-Submission Draft of the GX Neighbourhood Plan in preparation for the Regulation 14 Pre-submission Consultation- for details see full minutes.
Next Steps – Zoom discussion with our Consultants Plan-et; to agree to review and update Draft Plan following receipt of HRA and SEA Assessment reports (see December Timeline update below and discussion notes) plus any other updates needed to move the Plan forward to achieve the next milestone in this Process :
Regulation 14 – Pre-submission consultation of the draft neighbourhood plan – this will take a few months to prepare for and present to Steering Group for approval plus adoption by Gerrards Cross Town Council, following this the Draft Plan will be published to bring it to the attention of all residents and businesses in the neighbourhood plan area with a copy to any statutory consultation bodies and Buckinghamshire Planning Authority.
This public consultation will last for six weeks.
Gerrards Cross Neighbourhood Plan have been awarded a Grant via Locality https://neighbourhoodplanning.org/ for this pre-submission consultation.
Next Steps – Having now received the legally required statutory assessment reports; Habitats Regulation Assessment HRA & Strategic Environmental Assessment SEA (both of which are available on the documents page of this website) – both reports make recommendations which we will need to incorporate into the Draft Plan and because this process has been lengthy the Steering Group will need to carry out a complete review and update before we can move on to the next stage. Another consideration to be included in this update are any changes to our ward boundaries following the recent Draft Proposal Consultation for Buckinghamshire from The Local Government Boundary Commission for England. For more information: https://www.bcereviews.org.uk/
As recorded last month the second of our commissioned reports; Strategic Environment Assessment Report (SEA) has now been finalised and approved by the GXPlan Steering Group, both reports were deemed necessary by Natural England – ‘ Where a neighbourhood plan allocates sites for development. Where the neighbourhood area contains sensitive natural or heritage assets that may be affected by the proposals in the plan.’ The SEA report can be viewed here.
The Gerrards Cross Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group have now received the first of the commissioned reports required by Natural England. The Habitats Regulation Assessment report has been circulated to the Steering Group for review. This report makes recommendations for inclusion in our Draft Neighbourhood Plan. Once fully reviewed this report and the awaited Strategic Environment Assessment report (SEA) will be available on this website – see Documents / Meeting Minutes page.
As updated in June our Grant applications were successful and both the required assessments: Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) as recommended by Natural England and a Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) have been commissioned using expert consultants via Locality.org.uk., both assessments are progressing. We are due to receive an initial ‘first stage’ SEA scoping report for review before the full assessment can proceed.
Following our grant application last month we are pleased to advise that the Gerrards Cross Neighbourhood Plan has been awarded a grant in the sum of £2,472.00. This Grant has been funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
This Grant will go directly towards the costs involved in commissioning the required Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) as recommended by Natural England. During ongoing investigations into this assessment the Steering Group were advised that a Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) is now also required. Both these important assessments have now been commissioned and once completed will be incorporated into our Neighbourhood Plan.
We are currently busy working on:
- Obtaining a grant from Locality to cover the Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) as recommended by Natural England plus commissioning said Assessment
- Preparing ‘next steps’ towards a final draft in preparation for Regulation 14 a six week Pre-Submission Consultation