Neighbourhood Development Plan - February 2017

Posted on February 28, 2017

This is the February update from the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group.

The Neighbourhood Steering Group have had another busy month, a large number of us from the village, including steering group members visited the Eaton Park exhibition by Willis Dawson. This exhibition caused quite a lot of concern and activity. The Parish Council meeting was attended by three times the usual number of public visitors and five more joined the February steering group meeting. There is nothing like a proposed new large development to push us into action. I received a number of messages about this development most of which expressed concern over the amount of traffic that would use Eaton Park and the effect that 70 new homes would have on our village i.e. drainage, sewage, flooding, school, parking, cars and traffic.

During our meeting we discussed where new dwellings could be sited, this is a particularly difficult question as most positions affect someone or an important part of our village, we all would prefer not to lose the things we enjoy about our environment. Nevertheless new homes are inevitable. The good news is that we have collected lots of information about Eaton Bray's biodiversity, heritage, historic and listed buildings so we are getting a better idea of what to avoid. We also carried out a short traffic survey which indicated that more traffic travels South at peak times rather than North. We plan to carry out another survey when the new M1 / A5 link is open.

Finally, we are now getting to the stage where we will hold a community consultation so that we can get your views on how the Neighbourhood Plan is shaping up. It is vital that residents, businesses and community groups make their views known to us including direction of growth of the village, sites that should be developed, parking and traffic issues, wildlife and biodiversity.

Keep your eyes on the Parish Council web site and Facebook page for more information.

If you feel you can offer any support please come along to our meetings. However support doesn't need to be attending monthly meetings, perhaps you have the time to help with data collection/research.

Contact the Parish Clerk at www.ebpc.co.uk - please feel free to attend the next Steering Group meeting.

Meetings are planned for the last Monday of the month at 19.30hrs at the Coffee Tavern, Eaton Bray.