, and Neighbourhood Planning Group

Minutes of the meeting held on Wed. 11th July 2018, 7.30pm

Attending Apologies

Helen Knight ( chaired the meeting ) James Winspear Chris Smith Elan Preston-Whyte Jon Knight Nick Gowens Kayti Foster Louis Smith Peter Gardner Sabine Schreiner Peter Freeman Lesley Peel Ailsa Blackman Duncan Boulton Christine Allsopp Charles Hopkinson-Woolley

Item 1. Minutes of last Meeting The minutes of the meeting held on 20th June 2018 were approved.

Item 2. Matters arising The Community Engagement group met on 25th June. Work on the website is ongoing – see item 7 of these minutes. Consultation 2 has been completed and distributed – collection will commence on 14th July. James devised a blank template for analysis of Cons 2 - Jon volunteered to produce a spreadsheet. We decided that it would be helpful if each survey collector inputted their own data. Jon will send the spreadsheet round to all survey collectors. No update from Nick regarding meeting with church steering group. Action: Jon will create a spreadsheet and send it to all survey collectors, who will then input their findings from the questionnaires.

Item 3. Finance Duncan confirmed that we have received £5000 from SODC. Lewknor parish council has also allocated £4000 for the NP. We do not have to pay for the work that AECOM are doing for us - i.e. producing a Housing Needs Assessment. Printing for Cons 2 cost £145. £308 is left in the kitty. No other expenses have been incurred.

Item 4. Reports from Cons. 1 and Drop-in events We formally approved the Consultation 1 report and the Drop-in events report.

Item 5. Vision Statement We decided to defer a decision on the wording of the vision statement until we are further along the NP process.

Item 6.Next Steps The working parties that we set up last Autumn have either completed their tasks or they are nearing completion. It seemed that we should re-define our groups for the next stages of the NP – housing, site allocations, communications and policy writing. James had a discussion last week, before his holiday, with Helen and Chris. He thought that housing and site allocations were the first priorities. We hope that AECOM will send their Housing Needs Assessment at the end of this month – they draw on existing written data - we should also have data from Cons 2 by then. Duncan, Christine and Chris agreed to work on housing needs next month.AECOM have not started on site allocation work yet – they await our instruction. SODC have already completed a call for sites from landowners, but we should update this through our own discussions with landowners. The Environment group, at their meeting last night, agreed to focus on site allocations and policy writing – this group comprises Peter G., Peter F., Sabine, Lesley, Kayti and Jon. Christine and Chris offered to join this group, which will meet next Tues. 17th July, 7.30pm at Peter G's house. The Community Engagement group will continue to work on the website and other methods of keeping residents informed e.g. a stall at the forthcoming Horticultural Show and Fete. Members who were unable to attend last night's meeting can join any of the new working groups - please ask Helen or Chris for dates of meetings.

Item 7. Website The Community Engagement group met on 27th June to discuss progress of the website with Louis. We thought that Watlington's NP website was clear and useful – Louis agreed to try to replicate this, but found some technical points difficult. Elan contacted the Watlington NP group, whoich was very helpful and passed on the name of the company who designed their website – vision ICT. Helen has been in touch with this company – to design, develop and host a website would cost £500. They would input all the initial content and we would be responsible for regular updating afterwards. Helen spoke again to Louis, who intimated that he would be pleased to be relieved of this task. We agreed to ask vision ICT to undertake this work for us. Helen offered to contact them to find out how long the work would take and to tell Louis our decision. The Community Engagement group will decide the content of the website. Ailsa undertook to update the site regularly. Action: Helen will liaise with vision ICT and Louis. The Community Engagement group will decide content of website. Ailsa will be responsible for updating website.

Item 8. Policies We looked at policy headings from other completed NPs. We agreed that one finding of Cons 1 was that the majority of residents want to preserve the rural character of the parish and that a policy to that effect could be written. We agreed that we must follow the National Framework and the SODC guidelines on housing. There is no standard format for NPs – each NP group must write their own NP. Planning Aid have produced a template and structure for NPs which we should study and could follow. The NP should not be a negative document- it should include positive ideas for land use. Charles offered to contact Ricardo Rios at SODC for guidance on policy writing. We decided to review completed NPs from the SODC area, to help decide on relevant policies for us. We chose 6 plans – , Brightwell-cum- Sotwell, , Little Milton, Radley and / . We agreed to look at their structure and templates, to look at their indexes and hopefully produce a reverse flow chart at the next meeting, in order to decide what needs doing first. Action: Charles will contact Ricardo for guidance on policy writing. Action: All members to study at least one NP from list above.

Item 9. Working Group reports The Infrastructure group have worked on the road network, footpaths and public safety – ways of linking the villages together. Their next step is to decide which policies to write.

The Environment group have almost finished the character assessments and are now summarising them for the NP document. They plan to describe the methology they have used, write an introduction and their final report.

Item10. AOB We discussed the planning inquiry into the possible development in Wat Rd. The Strategic group has not yet decided their next steps. SODC have secured a 5 year housing land supply, which may help our case. Duncan informed us that the parish council are taking advice on whether to apply for Rule 6 status, which would mean that they could employ a barrister to speak on their behalf. Sonning Common PC did this – it cost approx £15000. Charles offered to contact Ricardo at SODC, to find out what stage the NP would need to attain in order to have relevance at the planning inquiry. He will also ask about the structure and headings of our NP and what level of engagement we should have with businesses in the parish. Action: Charles will check the points above with Ricardo.

Date of next meeting. Next meetings - 25th July, 29th August, 7.30pm – Jubilee Hall, Lewknor