VIA Idridgehay & Alton and Ashleyhay Parish Neighbourhood Plan Minutes of the 4th meeting of the Steering Committee held on Tuesday, April 30th 2013 at 7pm in the Village Corn Store. Present: Anna Bristow, Nick Bristow, Hazel Haslam, Dudley Ibbett, Glynis Ibbett, Eric Matkin, Martin Redman, Jane Smith, Val Taylor, Val Whitley, John Wiltshire, Muff Wiltshire. Apologies: Michael Smith, Nessie Stevenson and Robert Tatler. In attendance: Simon Butterworth, Ros Hallam, Rachael Howitt, Elvin Ibbotson, Joanna Kay, Jill Matthews and David Taylor. 1. Minutes of previous meeting. John Wiltshire opened the meeting. All agreed the minutes of the meeting held on March 28th were a true and accurate record and they were signed by John. 2. Matters arising. Muff thanked all those who had taken part in the buildings survey and delivery of the information sheets. From the information received she produced a draft summary of the property types in the neighbourhood and copies were circulated. Positive responses had been received from the public with nothing negative to date. John thought this exercise and groups of people working together gave a real sense of community involvement in the Neighbourhood Plan. 3. Reports from working groups. Reports had been received and circulated from each of the groups. Further to these each reported as follows: a) Economic – Martin reported that the group had looked at baseline information for housing, business and tourism and the issues arising from each topic. For example, tourism, what resources do we have and how can we improve them? Housing, what type of housing do we need? Business, what already exists and what others would we encourage/discourage? b) Infrastructure – Jill reported that the group had focussed on areas to research and members had already put a lot of effort into getting information on transport, utilities and mapping. One of the areas was capacity and the issues that might arise for new development. Peter had written to STWA enquiring if there was capacity for water and sewage for a small housing development but they were not willing to answer requests for this type of information without a fee. They would normally get requests like this from developers and charge around £145.00 for 7 houses. John asked whether we want to pay for information and it was generally agreed that this detail was relevant and we perhaps could factor in some costs for this in our grant application. c) Environmental – Glynis reported that this group had looked at topics of Statutory and non-Statutory designations including biodiversity, public open spaces, footpaths, landscape character and had agreed an action plan. Glynis and Muff were working together on designations and Glynis was getting relevant landscape character evidence. Muff had looked up the criteria for community village greens, with the triangle at the top of Taylor’s Lane in mind. Evidence of public use is required e.g. picnics, dog walking, playing games etc. The only recorded public use of this green was for the street party last year to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. However, documents exist from 1721 relating to the enclosure of land from the top of Storer Lane and down Taylor’s Lane, an area known as Stoney Bank. The triangle is not included in the enclosure and possibly therefore remains common land. There was some discussion as to whether the working groups should share relevant information from their research. All agreed this could be useful. 4. Next steps and timetable. John felt we needed more targeted information regarding the people and businesses in the parishes and this suggests a questionnaire. Working groups should think about relevant questions before the next Steering Committee meeting. Things to consider are: a) Questions must be clear and unambiguous b) Justify every question e.g. how will the question help the neighbourhood plan, why do we need to know someone’s age? c) Multiple-choice questions can be constraining so a box for further comments is often useful. d) Numerical questions can be grouped together. e) The information will need to be analysed. Do we have any experience? It was agreed that working groups put together some questions, which could be fine-tuned by a smaller group and then trialled on say, 10 people. So as not to overwhelm people, the questionnaire should be limited to 4 pages/8 sides. The agreed timetable was that the questionnaire should be drafted by the end of June for sending out in July. There followed discussion on how the questionnaire would be delivered. It was generally agreed that we would get a far greater response if we delivered the survey by hand and arranged to collect it later with an offer to help completing it if required. 5. Engaging with the community. It was agreed that we organise another public meeting to stimulate ideas and get opinions before sending out the questionnaire. We need to get people involved with the process before they have to complete it. Muff suggested that following the successful January meeting in the church we could hold an open forum meeting with people asking questions, both for and against certain issues, to stimulate discussion. Simon thought that people who had shown some interest in January might appreciate a progress report. Ros suggested each working group put up a mini exhibition of what they had been doing. We could also have something in place for people to say what they would like included in the plan and refreshments would be appreciated. The event would be advertised by flyers, hand delivered using volunteers as before, and notices. The date was set at Wednesday, June 19th. 6. Funding and Treasurer’s report. a) Jane gave the Treasurer’s report on behalf of Michael. Of the £500 allocated by the Parish Council in January, there remains £300.89. To date, we have incurred expenses for room hire at £130.00, refreshments for the January public event at £41.61 and the purchase of wine glasses at £27.50. b) Jane had been looking into funding through Locality and had drawn up a list of funding needs. Locality offers two options: Grant Support for professional fees and expenses and Direct Support for professional help from their resources. There was much discussion as to why we would need professional help and it was agreed that a degree of expertise was crucial in order to get our neighbourhood plan passed at the examination stage. The plan will be a legal document and as such, has to be evidence based and satisfy legal requirements. Glynis had been in touch with the High Peak and they had received direct support from another source, which had given them the advice and assistance of a qualified Inspector. Locality offer direct support from qualified planning officers at the Royal Town Planning Institute, their charitable branch Planning Aid England and Urban Vision who put together the road map and sheets we are working to. As professional fees tend to be around £500 a day, we might achieve better value from direct support. John suggested we should apply to Locality for direct support for professional help and grant support for expenses and all agreed. Dudley pointed out that we had not included an estimate for producing the final document and Jane agreed to look into this before completing the grant application. 7. Reports from other meetings. a) Wirksworth Transition group Transport held a recent meeting presented by transport consultant Sian Thornthwaite. Three groups discussed walking, public transport and cycling with John and Jane participating in these. Interesting and surprising facts emerged. There were quite a few people who had arrived by car but lived within walking distance. The two main issues were how to make it easier for children to walk to school and encouraging adults to walk more by cleaning up the paths, promoting walking for health, improving the pavements and street lighting. b) Wirksworth Civic Society. Muff reported on this recent meeting. Heather Lounds gave a talk on the progress of the Wirksworth Neighbourhood Plan. Wirksworth was one of the vanguard towns that had received a grant as part of the pilot scheme, which they used for professional help. Speaking of community involvement, Heather said there are three main barriers to participation in the Neighbourhood Plan: lack of confidence, language i.e. technical jargon, and why bother/what difference will it make? c) Ecclesbourne Partnership. Following a meeting last month at Waltham House presented by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Robert and Michael are now volunteer river wardens and will be monitoring the Ecclesbourne river and banks and reporting back to the Trust periodically. A recent publication ‘Ecclesbourne Partnership – Love Your River’ has been circulated. Michael has contacted the Environment Agency for some details of their phosphate sampling trials and progress report of the improvements to the quality of the river. d) Ecclesbourne Way walking route. Muff reported on a meeting at Alport Heights on April 19th between the Ambler Valley Ramblers and The National Trust. Also present were representatives from the Environment Agency, Natural England, the local community and a DCC footpaths officer. Natural England had asked the AV Ramblers to form the walk and the purpose of the meeting was to get permission from the National Trust to allow some modification to access at Alport Height, for the siting of an interpretation board and putting up waymark signs. The residents hopefully succeeded in persuading the limitation of information boards to one low board at the Alport car park and one at the railway stations in Wirksworth and Idridgehay. 8. Any other business. a) Muff handed round a printout of the vision for the Neighbourhood Plan, which had been agreed as part of our formal application for a designated area.