Neighbourhood Plan- update

Update on the Neighbourhood Plan

As recently communicated Neighbourhood Plan is now in the examination stage. The examiner has undertaken a high level assessment of the NP. Unfortunately the examiner has found a problem with the environmental assessment of the Parish.

The examiner has written an open letter (this can be found on the BDBC website) to the parish council and BDBC. This states that one of the supporting environmental assessments carried out by BDBC on our behalf, does not cover the specific conditions required to assess the part of the River Test catchment area in the parish. This means we do not meet a legal Basic Condition. The impact area she refers to is a very small part of the parish, but it is a legal requirement introduced in 2018 and an environmental assessment has to be carried out. The examiner outlined the choices we have moving forward.

We clearly wish to achieve our objective of a live NP for the community. We have therefore formally confirmed to BDBC that we wish them to perform the work to update the assessment and if they are supportive of this (which they said they are). However, this update has a timing impact on the examination. The examiner has said she will delay the continuation of the examination until the update is complete. She has also indicated that she wishes the update to go to consultation with the required environmental bodies. All of this will delay the NP. At the moment we have no understanding for how long the delay will be.

We have asked BDBC to urgently come back to us with the likely timing implications. We also would like to understand how this part of the environmental assessment was missed.

As soon as we get further clarification we will communicate this.