News item - 2014-09-23

Inaugural meeting of the Teversal, Stanton Hill & Skegby Neighbourhood Planning forum

 

The inaugural meeting of the Teversal, Stanton Hill & Skegby Neighbourhood Planning Forum was held on September 23rd, 2014 at the Manor Room in Teversal Village.

 

Mike Vardy chaired the meeting with help from Richard Goad, and local Ashfield councillor Jason Zadrozny was on hand to provide advice and guidance.

There were attendees from all three villages within the proposed Plan area, although it was generally agreed that we would have liked more attendees for this first meeting, in particular some younger residents.

 

The majority of the meeting was taken up with a presentation from Helen Metcalfe, an external planning consultant from Locality / Planning with People, who has been engaged to help the forum through the various stages of creating the Neighbourhood Plan. Her presentation provided an extremely helpful insight into the concepts behind a Neighbourhood Plan, the process of getting a Plan put together and the steps involved in getting a Plan agreed and approved.  A copy of the presentation can be found here.  She then spent a good amount of time answering questions from the audience.

 

Following the presentation the meeting was invited to review a large map showing the proposed boundary of the Plan area. A Google Maps version can be found here.  There then followed a discussion on the boundaries with some debate on whether Fisher Close, off Stoneyford Road in Skegby, should be included or not; a decision was taken to leaflet the residents of Fisher Close to ask them if they wished to be included.

 

Helen Metcalfe then introduced two activities that helped the meeting attendees to think about some of the important content that would be required for the Plan:

  • a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the area to help identify key topics that will need to be included in the Plan

  • a simple exercise to help determine the core objectives that the Plan should be aiming to achieve

The Draft Constitution for the Forum was then circulated and reviewed and a number of minor changes were proposed and accepted. Following a vote, the final version was accepted by those present as the agreed Constitution for the Forum.  It can be found here.

 

It was agreed that at the next meeting the Management Committee of the Forum:  Chairman, Treasurer, Secretary and two others, would be elected from those present at that meeting.

In the meantime Mike Vardy was proposed and accepted as temporary Chairman and Geoff Snare was proposed and accepted as temporary Treasurer.  These two temporary positions were required so that the Grant money that had been requested and approved, would be made available.

 

It was agreed that the next meeting would take place on October 23rd, at 6.30pm, at
The Beeches, Beech Street, off Barker Avenue, Healdswood, NG17 3JU.

 

Extra efforts will be made to publicise the meeting, and all those present were urged to talk to their friends and neighbours about the Forum and to get as many people as possible to come along to the next meeting.

 

The meeting closed at approximately 9:30pm.

 

A downloadable version of these minutes can be found here