384-Sustainable Joint Plan Draft V7.Indd
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Welwyn Hatfield 2021 This is a consultation document for Welwyn Hatfi eld’s draft Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan. It is now open for public consultation until 31 January 2009 Please submit your comments to: • Paul Underwood at [email protected] or 01707 357220 CONTENTS: Subject Page Foreword 2 The Borough’s Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan 2 - How it all fi ts together 2 - How the draft plan has come together 3 - The Sustainable Communities Act 3 - A draft vision for Welwyn Hatfi eld 2021 3 - Challenges and opportunities 3 - The Welwyn Hatfi eld Area 4 Safer and Stronger Communities 5 Sustainable Development 6 Affordable Housing and Quality Neighbourhoods 7 Health and Well Being 8 Jobs, Prosperity and Skills 9 Inclusive Communities 10 Sustainability – what it means to us 11 Ways to let us know what you think 12 Foreword 2 By John Dean, Chairman of the Welwyn Hatfi eld Alliance and Leader of the Council, and Michel Saminaden, Chief Executive of the Council The provision of high quality services is a priority for Welwyn Hatfi eld Council and our many partners in the Welwyn Hatfi eld Alliance. These range from housing and leisure services to those we and our partners are required to provide, such as refuse collection, recycling and planning services, policing, health services, children’s services, older people’s services and education. The Alliance aims to improve the way that local services are planned and delivered. It helps local agencies and others to focus on improving the quality of life and leadership in a locality. The Alliance has minimal resources of its own and relies on negotiations and pooling of resources between partners. We all want Welwyn Hatfi eld to be a safe, pleasant and well planned borough, where people can prosper, participate in community life and enjoy good health, and where our communities meet the needs of local people today as well as future generations. Our aspiration is for a borough that is environmentally sensitive, vibrant, built to a high standard and fair for everyone. A place where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential. This consultation document sets out the big strategic challenges we face and the main opportunities we share between now and 2021. By combining our corporate and community priorities into a single joint plan we have set out a clear commitment to meet jointly the needs and issues that you tell us are important. We believe this co-ordinated approach has led to greater clarity about the things that matter most to you and will lead to better local services. The purpose of setting up this engagement programme is so that partners, the people of Welwyn Hatfi eld, and businesses can let us know what they think needs to be done to promote the sustainability of the area. We believe we will succeed if we work together, agree and hold to a clear sense of direction, and have a determination to make a difference for existing communities and future generations. The Borough’s Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan Work on this plan began in May 2007. At that time An overarching vision for we took our Community Strategy and the Council’s the Welwyn Hatfield area Corporate Plan into a single planning framework. We recognised that despite many agency specifi c ‘plans’ there is only one Welwyn Hatfi eld, with many partners, each contributing to the overall local quality of life Shared long term objectives to 2021 of the borough. We are on course to complete, by May 2009, the plan’s transition into the Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan. Agency specific corporate plans – council, police, primary care trust, university etc How it all fi ts together The above framework allows each Alliance agency to continue developing their own corporate programme specifi c to their own area of work, within This consultation document sets out a simple high an overarching set of agreed, sustainable, long term level framework within which all Alliance partners and objectives for the Welwyn Hatfi eld area. For example the borough council can work: the Council’s own Corporate Plan, reviewed during 2008, has been structured around fi ve themes which has allowed many council teams to contribute towards the sustainable long term objectives for the area. 3 How the draft plan has come together ideas to improve local sustainability. Those selected will be submitted to government in Summer 2009. A very wide range of plans and strategies have informed this draft Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan. As well as listening to residents and A (draft) vision for Welwyn Hatfi eld 2021 partners evidence has been drawn from many sources. By 2021 Welwyn Hatfi eld will be a vibrant and culturally During the summer and autumn of 2007 and 2008 rich place, where people want to live and work. we completed a wide-ranging community engagement Everyone will have access to decent housing and enjoy programme to gather feedback across many issues of a high quality of life within healthy, safe and inclusive high importance to residents. This included workshops communities and neighbourhoods; where people have on specifi c topics, attendance at local events with a the opportunity to benefi t from growing prosperity, high footfall, Alliance workshops with many partners while also reducing their impact on the environment. such as health services and the police, a survey with our The borough’s settlements will retain their distinctive local Borough Panel and Council managers, Councillor character and in response to housing growth we will surveys and surgeries, engagement work on the Local have strengthened our town centres, reinforced existing Development Framework, work with our Youth Council neighbourhoods and created new ones. and focus groups on our local area vision. In February 2008 we completed a further consultation Challenges and opportunities programme with Alliance partners to identify and agree what matters and what matters most in Welwyn Hatfi eld, Work so far has begun to identify some of the main in relation to the Herts 2021 Plan. This has ensured challenges and opportunities we face, across six key the draft Welwyn Hatfi eld Sustainable Corporate and issues between now and 2021, to realise our vision: Community Plan is fully aligned to the Hertfordshire Forward framework and Local Area Agreements, as well as residents and local partners’ aspirations for the area. • Safer and stronger communities • Sustainable development To succeed we will need to tackle the complex • Affordable housing and quality neighbourhoods issues Welwyn Hatfield faces over the next decade • Health and well being or so, seeking to meet our aspirations for a safe, • Jobs, prosperity and skills prosperous, healthy and just society that lives • Inclusive communities within its environmental limits. This consultative programme seeks to strengthen the role of We will need to shape and agree our draft vision and communities and partners in deciding what needs agree, fi nalise and prioritise our long term objectives to be done, through constructive dialogue and and short term actions to deliver it. We will then debate. This will help us understand the necessary publish the Sustainable Joint Plan in May 2009. trade-offs and make engagement part of the decision-making process itself. Residents and partners have started to This draft Sustainable Corporate and Community Plan identify some of our main challenges: is open to consultation until the end of January 2009. Once fi nalised, the draft long term objectives and short • Serious acquisitive crime linked to drugs markets term actions will be converted into measurable targets. • Tackling the climate change agenda • The impact of housing growth on the local environment and infrastructure The Sustainable Communities Act • Levels of teenage pregnancy and smoking • The number of over 16’s not in employment, The Sustainable Communities Act 2007 asks local councils to give their residents more control over education or training improving their community. We are using the • Pockets of social and economic deprivation despite engagement process set out on page 12 to generate overall affl uence 4 And some of our main opportunities: The two towns are approximately 5 kilometres apart and accommodate over 80 per cent of the Borough’s • Building safe, sustainable communities and population between them. Outside the two main neighbourhoods settlements, Welwyn Hatfi eld boasts many distinctive • Managing natural resources for future generations villages and other vibrant rural communities set in rolling countryside and wooded areas. • Delivering housing growth within mixed sustainable communities Major businesses and employers with signifi cant • Improving health, well being and access to operations sited in the Borough currently include healthcare for all T-Mobile, the University of Hertfordshire and • Increasing the number of unskilled jobs available Oaklands College. As well as attracting inward locally investment and providing local employment • Helping older people maintain their independence opportunities, they add considerably to the money spent on local goods and services. The Welwyn Hatfi eld Area Welwyn Hatfield covers a total area of just under 130 square kilometres, with its southern sections Welwyn Hatfi eld is a unique blend of old and new, currently covered by the metropolitan Green Belt town and country, 35 kilometres north of London in around Greater London. The Borough is highly mid-Hertfordshire. Comprising two new towns (one of accessible by both road and rail. Motorway which is a Garden City), and surrounding Parishes, the connections are good with the A1(M) passing Borough is a mix of well-planned urban and unspoiled through the Borough north-south and linking with rural areas. the M25 to the south. The main east coast railway line runs through the Borough from London to the north east of England and on in to Scotland.