The Hanleys

It would seem that every time I propose a closing timetable for our Neighbourhood Plan I get it drastically wrong. Obviously in all those years as a project manager I learnt nothing!

A bit of an update on what happened in 2017.

• We redrafted the plan in response to comments received as part of our informal consultation with the community.
• This redraft was necessary before we went into the next formal stage which was a wider public consultation involving many statutory bodies. This took place from the end of April to the middle of June and unsurprisingly there were significant changes to be made before we moved on.
• Following assimilation of material comments from consultees we had once more to redraft the plan document in order to prepare a Submission Version to go to MHDC.
• We also prepared a Consultation Statement to demonstrate how we had involved our community, the comments received and how we had dealt with them.
• In addition we prepared a Basic Conditions Statement to demonstrate how we had met the requirements of neighbourhood planning regulations and EU legislation.

At the end of January 2018 we were able to make our submission to MHDC, our Local Planning Authority. The documents we have submitted are:

• The Neighbourhood Plan document – 139 pages.
• Supporting Document 1 – 63 pages.
• Supporting Document 2 – 101 pages.
• The Hanley Castle Design Guide – 44 pages.
• Basic Conditions Statement – 21 pages.
• Consultation Statement – 69 pages.

All of these documents are available on The Hanleys web site. Also on the site will be some Parish Maps; these do not form part of the Neighbourhood Plan submission but you may find them useful to put things into context.

What happens next?

• MHDC will submit our plan to a further public consultation process. This is scheduled to start around the middle of February and will last for 7 weeks to allow for Easter. We will post the actual dates on our website but if you wish to respond to the consultation you must do this through MHDC.
• MHDC will also subject the plan to an independent external inspection. It is quite possible that the plan document will have to be modified again following consultation and inspector comments. So the version you can see at the moment may not be the final version!
• Put the plan up for formal community approval via a referendum and finally –
• Implement it!

Thank you all for your continuing perseverance.

Parish Councillor Bob Lamb

Steering Group Chairman

February 2018

This is a further opportunity for the residents of the parish of Hanley Castle to comment upon the documents which comprise the neighbourhood plan. In 2014 we received the results of our questionnaires to both residents and businesses. Since then a lot of work has been done to reflect these results in policies that will form part of the planning process. The results of our previous informal consultation have been incorporated into these revised documents. Continue reading →

The results of the informal consultation are now available:

Continue reading →