Present:
John Hutchinson, Carole Lattin, John Ashby, Lesley Mavin, Richard Hornby
Apologies:
Patrick Conway
Notes and agreed actions:
• Local Nature Recovery Strategy
Carole has attended a briefing on this presented by Stuart Priestley, DCC Principal Ecologist
LNRS is a statutory document of which DCC is the lead partner and is a new direction for managing biodiversity. Parish and town councils (and NP areas) can contribute to this by identifying local sites in the consultation, which have the potential for biodiversity to be enhanced and contribute to better connectivity between habitats Recognising them might also help protect them from inappropriate development as their value (or potential) for biodiversity will be documented.
Consultation ends Tuesday 16th April
Action: Richard to forward details to all members, to read through in preparation for next meeting where responses to consultation will be discussed and prepared.
• Draft newsletter
Amendments to this were discussed and noted. Timescales are tight as this needs to be printed and delivered before GRA’s AGM in April.
Action: Lesley to forward amendments to Richard, who will share with Adrienne. Adrienne’s initial draft to be shared with members before printing.
Action: Lesley to arrange a suitable date with Patrick for the public meeting to be held and shared with members. Richard’s diary will be very limited.
• Stage 2 Consultations on Supplementary Planning Documents
DCC are undertaking consultations between 9.00 on Monday 26th February and 17.00 on Sunday 7th April on second drafts of Solar Energy SPD and Housing Needs SPD
Action: Members to review SPDs in preparation for next meeting where responses to the consultation will be discussed and prepared.
• Update on Housing Needs Assessment
At a recent meeting concerning the ‘Sniperley’ development that John Ashby attended, DCC were promoting a greater consideration of ‘disposable income’ with the developers when considering the need for affordable housing. It was agreed that we need to consider and use the term ‘disposable income’ going forward
Richard and Patrick have worked extremely hard to format responses to the initial draft of the HNA. The final draft was approved on 20th February It will be a few weeks before we receive the final report back from Locality. When received back, the document will need to be summarised into a ‘public friendly’ version – 1 or 2 pages in length and shared at the public meeting.
It was agreed that we need to begin to frame Policies that we would like to be part of the NP, but also to share with the public why a NP would ‘make a difference’
Action: Lesley to invite Stuart Carter to a NP meeting to share success stories from other Neighbourhood Plans, such as Witton Gilbert, City of Durham, where policies have been used successfully.
• Next Steps / Priorities
- Tidy up the newsletter
- Sort out the ‘Features and Facilities’ document
- Meet to discuss SPDs
- Meet to discuss final HNA document
- Prepare ‘public friendly’ version of HNA document
- Begin to frame Policies.
- Meet with Stuart Carter to share ‘success stories’
• Date and time of next meeting
The following two meeting dates were agreed:
*Thursday 21st March 2024 3.00pm to 5.00pm
*Tuesday 26th March 2024 5.00pm
One will be to discuss ‘Success stories’ and the other to discuss responses to SPDs and LNRS, dependent on which Stuart is able to attend