Twyning Bulletin the Newsletter of Twyning Parish Council No
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Twyning Bulletin The Newsletter of Twyning Parish Council No. 121 June 2014 Two great local photos by Paul Jackson cover photo by Clive Stanley * 2 Comment Please read carefully the Neighbourhood Development Plan. This will affect everyone in this village. It is from page 4. This is a very important time for you all to feel involved. Both our local Parish Action Groups RAID and RAGE have written with updates on their work for us all. Ps 22 and 26. Now is the time to support TRAC and think about what you can do to help with their summer fete. p28 There are many other villagers who volunteer to keep our village the pleasant place it is: All the various societies and clubs, leaders, governors, footpath clearers, litter-pickers and organisers. To them and anyone I have not mentioned - Thank you. Andrea Walton Editor What’s On Sunday 29th June: Beating the Bounds Picnic and walk. p 10 Weekend 12th and 13th July ‘Twyning Reflects’ on WW1 p 17 Saturday August 2nd Family Fun and Charity Cricket Day on The Village Green p 18 Sunday 3rd August 11.00am WW1 Commemorative event at the war memorial p 16 Saturday 23rd August 7.30pm Family Barn Dance p 23 Bank Holiday Monday 25th August The TRAC Summer fete p28 Parish Council Meetings June 16 Village Hall 8pm July 21 Village Hall 8pm September 15 Ann Townend 8pm 3 TWYNING NEIGHBOURHOOD DEVELOPMENT PLAN Introduction In response to a number of inquisitive housing developers who have re- cently taken an interest in our village, the Parish Council has decided to take preventative action and introduce control measures in order to guard against inappropriate development. These control measures will be intro- duced through The Localism Act and Neighbourhood Planning Regula- tions, Communities like our village have the right to undertake Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs). These are simply documents - produced by the community for their community - containing maps, lists and policies. They focus on shaping new development, so are based on land use and planning issues around practical things such as: Design of buildings Traffic management Utilities Affordable housing Sites for facilities e.g. shopping area, school, play area Provision of walking and cycling routes Where new allotments go Wildlife and landscape areas The main stages are: STEP 1: Get started - decide on the area to be covered by the plan, sub- mit your application to be a Designated Neighbourhood Area, set up your steering group and your NDP structure and budget requirements. Apply for a grant from ‘Locality’ STEP 2: Identify Issues - check on policies you must conform with, gather information on demographics, land use designations, stock take of facilities plus local surveys as appropriate e.g. retail, traffic. 4 STEP 3: Gather opinions - hopes, issues, and challenges and use these to produce a vision and objectives. STEP 4: Generate options for solutions and test these. This may involve consultation, site assessments and/or surveys. STEP 5: Draw up policies and actions and draft the NDP. Follow through with a mandatory consultation with the community. STEP 6: Submit the NDP to the local authority for a further mandatory consultation stage. STEP 7: The local authority organises and pays for an examination of the NDP. STEP 8: The local authority organises and pays for a referendum. If more than 50% of those voting vote ‘yes’ for the NDP then it becomes a statu- tory planning document - one that communities will use to support or challenge planning applications. Where are we now? We have completed STEP 1. Our village area has been officially ‘designated’ and now appears on the list of Parishes that are going though the NDP process. This hopefully will be recognized by developers, who may go elsewhere and find an easier target. We have now set up a Steer- ing Group and have received confirmation that our ‘Locality’ grant has been approved. The Neighbourhood Development Plan team is shown below: Denis Murray Chairman Collette Wright Administrator Jeremy Horsfall Theme Lead - Environment Louise Holland Theme Lead - Facilities & Services Geoff Cowper Theme Lead - Road Traffic & Transport Phil Griffin Theme Lead - Housing & Design Wez Marlow Theme Lead - Economy Bill O'Dell Web Site Liz O'Dell Communications Dave Henstock Statistics 5 Theme Group Support Leads The above is the core team, behind them administrators, and people with particular skills and expertise that will be invaluable to the success of the NDP. We are now well on the way with STEP 2 and by the time you read this article, many of you would have visited the Village Shop and been ap- proached by a member of the team to carry out a small survey, thus com- mencing STEP 3 of the NDP process. Surveys are very important in the NDP process, as it is evidence that we have consulted Parishioners and obtained their views on what they would like for our village. You can expect more surveys and meetings over the coming months, which I hope you will take part in, giving you the oppor- tunity to contribute your views on what you want for our village. If you wish to be more involved in this exciting venture, then please con- tact myself, or any member of the NDP team. Denis Murray Chairman – Twyning Parish Council Twyning 100 years ago and the impact of the outbreak of the 1st World War Almost everywhere you look especially on TV and in the newspapers there are reminders of 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War. Whatever you may feel about this and there are mixed feelings about the commemoration of this chapter in our history, no event in recent times has had such an impact on each and every village of our land. Watching some of the excellent programmes on the BBC, I seem to have learnt more about the events of 1914 than I ever did at school! The de- scent into warfare was and is both alarmingly human and terrifyingly costly. Recently I looked at the names of those from Twyning who went out to war and those who did not return. Some of you may feel that these events are best consigned to history. But I believe that confronting our history is the best guard against history repeating itself. (Cont. on p 17) 6 YOUR TEWKESBURY BOROUGH COUNCILLOR KEEPING YOU IN TOUCH TEWKESBURY BOROUGH COUNCIL – COUNCIL TAX Tewkesbury Borough Council has frozen its part of the council tax for the fourth year running. This means for 2014/2015 local residents will be paying the same council tax as they were in 2010/2011. The council agreed to set its budget at £8.7million for 2014/2015 which includes tak- ing a Government funding cut of 13.6% from last year. TEWKESBURY BOROUGH COUNCIL – JOINT CORE STRATEGY Tewkesbury Borough Council voted on the 7th April 2014 to approve the Joint Core Strategy (JCS) for the next stage of pre-submission consulta- tion. The JCS is a Development Plan that sets out the identified need & location for housing and employment up to 2031. The JCS will see 30,500 homes built across Tewkesbury, Cheltenham & Gloucester during this period. This plan has been very divisive and was only agreed by the ruling Administration on the Authority with all other groups voting against, (voting was 18 – 15). The main concerns being expressed at the meeting were over the significant loss of green belt land that is proposed, flooding and highways. We will now have to wait to see if the Govern- ment Inspector agrees with these concerns! FLOOD DEFENCE SCHEME MOTION Following the floods in January & February I tabled a motion calling for a ‘detailed & comprehensive Flood Defence Scheme to be prepared for the Borough of Tewkesbury’ and then to be forwarded to the Government accordingly for funding to help protect our residents from ongoing & fu- ture flooding. I was very disappointed that the ruling Administration on the authority voted against this motion on the night and it was therefore lost. However, as always I will continue to fight for better flood protec- tion for local residents. Cllr. Gordon Shurmer Borough Councillor for Twyning Tel: 01684 772780 E-Mail: [email protected] 7 By now most of you will have seen this logo around the village, and under- stand what it is about. For those who are not sure, the Neighbourhood Devel- opment Plan is a nation-wide project to encourage communities to get organ- ised in order to present a unified and evidence-based plan to their local au- thority. The statutory status of Twyning Neighbourhood Development Plan will give the residents of Twyning Parish more of a say in future develop- ments, regeneration and conservation over the next 20 years. It will spell out to service providers and developers how we would, and would not, like our area to develop, as some change is inevitable over the next 20 years. We have put together an initial survey, which has already had 86 responses. Thank you to all those who have responded, your views are much appreci- ated and so too are the offers of your help. We will be in touch shortly. Volunteers on the Twyning NDP Steering Group are concentrating on 5 main areas: Roads and Transport, Housing, Facilities and Services, Our En- vironment, Our village Economy. Theme based groups are currently being set up and if anyone who has not yet volunteered but would like to be in- volved in a theme group, please email the administrator at [email protected] or get in touch with a parish councillor, who will pass on the details.