Pre meeting notes by Rory (NDP Chairman)

Thankyou for asking for this meeting.

We know this is taking up everybody’s evening, so we hope this meeting shouldn’t take up more than about half an hour.

It’s great to be able to give you an update.
I know that William has been giving the parish council regular updates, but it’s always good to have a bit more dialogue and answer any questions you might have.

• From our side, I’m the NDP chairman.
• Kevin Havill is our our vice-chairman & head of BETI (Business, Employment Transport & Infrastructure)
• William is our key parish council representative, the NDP secretary, who has kept the admin side of things together, including all the finances where he has managed to get more grants than we all expected.
• Prof Phil Moore is a key member of our BETI and Steering Group.
• Roger Kayes, the head of our housing group wasn’t able to make the meeting
• & Christine Ashby Zwozdiak head of our Environment & Heritage group has had to step back from the entire NDP due to personal circumstances.

I know Tatiana has been involved in NDPs elsewhere, so I’m sure she’ll only smile when I say that like many projects, the amount of work needed, the depths of detail required  and technical challenges has been more than many expected.

In our early meetings we considered a fast tack NDP, but the clear majority of those involved wanted a plan that has much substance as sensibly possible. For example, we firmly believe our plan is going to cover more areas, in more detail than the excellent St Agnes Plan. The scale and complexity of this project should not be under estimated by the Parish Council.

In relation to the St Agnes plan, if we look at their time scales, from the time of their first public surveys to having the draft plan to start the end consultation steps, we are looking set to do it in a month less than St Agnes took. We are on track to publicise the draft in May of this year.

Similar to St Agnes we have split the NDP into 3 main areas:

• Housing
• Environment & Heritage
• BETI (Business, Employment, Transport & Infrastructure)

I have shared our current central document to Sam, Peter & Tatiana. These 110 pages link into a lot more documents, but it’s the core bit where we welcome any feedback and other comments.

I’ve also had a look at NDP progress in Cornwall. From Cornwall Council data, so far two thirds of Cornwall are covered by NDPs, with one third of these designated areas having so far been adopted (38 of the 138 designated areas have adopted NDPs) or started the final statutory stages.

In terms of comparing our progress to other areas, we are in the same broad time scale as other, non fast track, NDPs.
We have had a team of over 15 and regularly had members of the public attend meetings drop down to only 6 that reliably attend meetings.
It’s a long time since we’ve had more than 6 people at a Steering Group meeting.

We lost a key group lead, Christine, but luckily her and the rest of the group had already done the lions share of the work, so were able to bring in a Cornwall Council recommended external consultant to finish off and wrap up Environment & Heritage, this seems to be working really well.

We are continually very mindful that at any time a developer could put in a substantial application before our NDP that will have Settlement Boundaries and a Primary Residence Policy. For example if a developer for the Holywell Bay ex military land puts in a new application, post our NDP reaching a critical stage, it could mean it is rejected or require fundamental alteration, more towards what people in the parish want.

Our progress to date has only been because of phenomenal amounts of work from the team of volunteers, with the support we have had from Cornwall Council and the parish council.

In terms of headline areas the NDP is set to cover,

• for Housing,
  • settlement boundaries & a
  • Primary Residence Policy and an
  • associated Design Guide & Design Codes.

• for Environment & Heritage, our initial public surveys and public meetings showed consistent strong support to protect these:
  • is the landscape and environment that is the main reason people wish to live and work here.
  • so the hundreds of hours of Local Landscape Character Assessments (LLCA), and other work has identified much of the environment & heritage assets the parish has, so as to give them greater protection.
• for BETI (Business, Employment, Transport & Infrastructure) as we have Kevin and Phil from that group here, I’ll hand over to them.