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Dear Member
A leaflet entitled "Harpenden Neighbourhood Plan. Have Your Say..." has recently been delivered to all Harpenden residents by Harpenden Town Council.
The leaflet asks for your comments on five aspects of the draft Neighbourhood Plan and gives the dates for four ‘drop-in engagement events’ starting on 3 July and finishing on 12 July.
It also, at the back, lists 17 sites which the Town Council is currently assessing for their suitability for development, a number of which are in the Green Belt.
You are encouraged to make time to attend the events and complete the survey.
In particular, please be aware that although the survey does not ask for your views about the sites which the Town Council is considering for development, we understand that more information will be available on them at the drop-in sessions and HGBA would encourage you to take the opportunity to tell the Town Council what you think about the specific sites, as well as the objectives of the Plan.
The Harpenden Neighbourhood Plan website is at www.harpenden.gov.uk/neighbourhood-plan and includes a link to an electronic version of the survey if you prefer that to the paper booklet.
Just to recap:
Your District Council should first have in place a ‘Strategic Local Plan’ (SLP) but has not satisfied the Planning Inspectorate on the way in which it has cooperated on planning matters with neighbouring councils like Dacorum.
This issue of ‘Failure to Cooperate’ is currently being considered in a Judicial Review by a judge in the High Court.
Following on from an SLP, there should be in place a ‘Detailed Local Plan’ which provides the detail on how the strategy will be implemented.
The third level down in the planning process is a ‘Neighbourhood Plan’ which is the plan that Harpenden Town Council has decided to complete by early 2018.
They are doing that in the full knowledge that the District Council does not have an SLP in place or a Detailed Local Plan.
Harpenden Town Council’s latest leaflet on its evolving Neighbourhood Plan has attracted a range of critical comments from our Association’s members who consider it poorly drafted and full of ‘consultant speak’ from Nexus Planning who are London-based consultants guiding Harpenden Town Council through the process for establishing a Neighbourhood Plan.
One of our members commented that Nexus Planning is using information derived from your District Council’s controversial draft SLP which is a dog’s breakfast even in the eyes of the Town Council.
With that in mind, it is absolutely worth reading the Town Council’s critical submission on what your District Council’s SLP is lining up for Harpenden. Please click here to download the report.
Should your District Council fail to put in place an SLP, the way is open for developers to make speculative planning applications on sites all over the District in which we live.
Should those speculative applications from developers to build on land around or near Harpenden start to happen, the completion and content of a Neighbourhood Plan for Harpenden will carry at least some weight with The Planning Inspectorate.
So residents worried about the future of the Town should get involved, attend the Town Council’s ‘drop-in engagement events’ and respond to ‘Harpenden Detailed Local Plan. Have your say’.
Don’t hold back. Harpenden is ‘on the rack’.
Thank you.
David Rankin
Chairman
The Harpenden Green Belt Association
email: secretary@harpendengreenbelt.org.uk
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