Neighbourhood Development Plan - May 2019

Posted on May 1, 2019

Several months have passed since I last wrote in Focus, I imagine those of you who follow the Neighbourhood Plan (NP) have been wondering what has happened. The answer is quite a lot, most activities have been administrative with very little to report, but I am now able to give an update.

Following our consultation and village meetings held in the Coffee Tavern last summer we submitted our NP to Central Bedfordshire (CBC) at the beginning of December. CBC were then able to commence their review of our NP by holding a "Regulation 16 Consultation" early in 2019, this is a second check on our NP making sure that we comply with Neighbourhood Planning Law as well as giving various statutory consultees an opportunity to consider our NP again. Which is lucky that we did, the Chilterns Conservation Board who look after Dunstable Downs (and lots of other very important ANOB's) had a lot to say and gave us some important advice.

The Reg. 16 Consultation completed at the end of March and in April CBC appointed an independent examiner in accordance with current NP regulations. The examiner wrote to the Parish Council on 30th April, a copy of this letter can be found on the Parish website along with his 30 questions, plenty for me to do over the next week, roll on my family holiday….

If we answer the examiner's questions to his satisfaction, there will be a referendum (that dreaded word!) later in the year.

We hope that you found this update useful, I know planning stuff can be boring, but the alternative may not be what we would like for the village.

This and other documents are posted on the Parish web site www.ebpc.co.uk follow the link to Neighbourhood Plan. Send your comments to the Parish Clerk at [email protected]

Thank you.
Glenn Wigley - Chairman EBPC NP