Coggeshall Neighbourhood Plan Summer 2019 Update

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This has been a busy year for the group – we are pressing ahead trying to progress the plan as fast as we can allowing for the many and various rules and regulations, planning applications and the slow wheels of external influences.

To date we have:

  • Reviewed the community’s responses to the Regulation 14 questionnaire. Thank you very much to everyone who responded! Changes that arise from these will be incorporated into the Regulation 15 Plan.
  • Reviewed stakeholder responses to the Regulation 14 questionnaire. Thank you very much to all respondents too. Changes arising from these will be incorporated into the Regulation 15 Plan.
  • The stakeholder responses are now with our planner for review.
  • We have had several meetings with Braintree District Council to discuss the Plan and clarify their comments in response to Reg 14. The Plan must comply with BDC’s Local Plan.
  • Drawn up a great long list of additional changes to the Plan, which includes reviewing against the National Planning Policy Framework Guidance as it changed again during the Reg 14 consultation period….
  • We have commissioned a Habitat Regulation Assessment (HRA) and Sustainability Environmental Assessment (SEA) and met with consultants. These are both necessary in order to allocate sites for development in the Plan. Ordinarily, the local authority, BDC, would do this but given their Plan is not yet finished, the Neighbourhood Plan group has organised and paid for the surveys via Coggeshall Parish Council. These are underway and the results may change the Plan.
  • Landuse Consultants were commissioned by BDC, Tendring and Colchester councils to look at garden communities. We responded to the scoping opinion on this assessment with the Monkswood Garden Community (north of the A120, 80% of which is in Coggeshall Parish), and the ‘Non garden community’, which proposed infill of all the land from West Street up and around to the east of Coggeshall (including the Bovis site) all firmly at the forefront of our minds.
  • The developers of the Dutch Nursery Site have now applied for full planning permission. The NP group put forward their comments on the design detail to CPC, which were submitted by the CPC to Braintree District Council. We await the outcome of this decision from Braintree.
  • Bovis, who has outline planning permission for the land at Colchester Road, undertook a public consultation exercise and consulted the PC and CNP subcommittee. We have put forward our views on the site to try and improve the design, facilities, infrastructure and green credentials of this development. We hope to continue to engage with Bovis to try and turn this development into a ‘positive’ for the existing and new communities now that it has been granted planning permission.
  • We are reviewing our infrastructure policy in accordance with advice from BDC and our planner to help retain the money from the Section 106 agreements with the developers on the Dutch Nursery and Colchester Rd sites. We want this money to stay in Coggeshall, so it must, therefore, be put towards formal sports facilities that are not in private hands. Currently, we are looking at a few options, which topped the list following community consultation and an assessment process which examined viability. These include improving the existing basketball court on the recreation ground and adding in a netball court, installing a bowling green on the land opposite the children’s play area next to the Coggeshall Surgery and adding new outdoor gym equipment on the recreation ground. It is noticeable that there is a lack of formal sporting facilities for women as well as our older population so we hope that these facilities might help address this.

Next, we just need to incorporate all of this in the Regulation 15 document….!

All residents’ views are very welcome and you are always welcome to attend a CNP meeting to listen and give us your thoughts.

Looking forward to completing the Plan!

The Coggeshall Neighbourhood Plan Subcommittee