Nottinghamshire Minerals Plan

HERE WE GO AGAIN !!

Last summer, the new Conservative administration at County Hall withdrew the Minerals Plan prepared by the previous Labour administration for examination by the Planning Inspectorate.

The County Council have now announced that they are going to prepare a new plan. This means that all comments submitted by interested parties such as CPRE Notts on the discarded plan are now completely redundant and that we have to start again. Whilst this may mean we again have opportunities to object to proposals that were still in the old plan, there seems to be an assumption that everyone has countless time on their hands to engage with county council consultations.

The current adopted Nottinghamshire Minerals Local Plan is out of date and work is now underway again to draft a replacement plan. The new Minerals Local Plan will cover the period 2016 to 2036 and will set out how much mineral we are likely to need, site specific allocations to meet identified demand and a range of planning policies against which future minerals development will be assessed.

The Issues and Options consultation is the first, but an important, stage in preparing the new Plan. The document will set out the key issues that are expected to arise over the plan period to 2036 and what reasonable options the Council thinks exist to meet them. A series of questions will be included in the consultation document to aid discussion.

It is important to note that the Issues and Options consultation document will not be considering or identifying new quarries. This process will be undertaken at a later stage in the Plan preparation process.

Subject to approval at Communities and Place Committee on the 9th November 2017 the Council will be undertaking an 8 week consultation period between 20th November 2017 and the 14th of January 2018.

The Issues and Options consultation document along with additional background information will be available on the County Council website at Nottinghamshire.gov.uk/minerals from the 20th November 2017. A reference copy will be available at District/Borough Council
offices and at the main libraries in West Bridgford, Beeston, Arnold, Newark, Mansfield, Worksop, Retford, Sutton In Ashfield and Kirkby In Ashfield.

The County Council is encouraging responses to be made via its online consultation system. Details of how to use the online consultation system can be found on the website at Nottinghamshire.gov.uk/minerals.

Comments submitted via email or letter will still be accepted subject to a name and email or address being provided.

Once the consultation event has finished the Council will consider all of the responses and where appropriate these will be used to inform the development of a draft Minerals Local Plan.

Further public consultation will then be undertaken on a draft minerals plan before the final Minerals Local Plan is submitted to the Secretary of State for an Independent Examination.

The timetable for the preparation of the Minerals Local Plan is as follows:

• November 2017: Publication of the Issues and Options public consultation
document
• June 2018: Publication of the draft Minerals Local Plan and associated public
consultation
• November 2018: Publication of the final Minerals Local Plan and period of formal
consultation
• Summer 2019: Independent Examination
• Autumn 2019: Adoption of the Minerals Local Plan by the County Council.

Alongside the Issues and Options consultation, additional evidence gathering for the development of the Minerals Local Plan is being undertaken. A Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report detailing the scope and methodology of the Sustainability Appraisal, which will be an integral part of the Plan’s development, is also to be published on the 20th November. Consultation on this document will run alongside the Issues and Options
between the 20th November 2017 and the 14th January 2018.

The consultation documents will be available on the County Council’s website from the 20th November 2017.

CPRE NOTTS WILL BE MAKING REPRESENTATIONS: If you have any comments please let us know.