Page 49 - Ickford NP Consultation Report

ICKFORD NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN CONSULTATION REPORT : VISION FOR ICKFORD 49

Annex 7.

March 2018 edition of the
Ickford Informer.

The following is the article in the March edition of the Ickford Informer. This
newspaper is delivered to every house in the village thus keeping the whole village
abreast of current developments and giving all residents the opportunity to join
the steering group.

www.visionforickford.co.uk

ICKFORD NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN (INP) – February update

The Neighbourhood Plan group met again this month, and were delighted to welcome two new members -
Tim Howard and Alan Perkins, bringing the number in the team up to 10. Tim has kindly agreed to take on
the major role of helping with the website and social media so we can keep you all informed of the progress
we are making, and for you to provide comment and input, in due course, on the plan and any proposed
polices that are recommended to support it.

We have been successful in our grant application, which has given us some funding to progress the first
stage, and we have engaged Sally Chapman as a consultant to the group. Sally is a town planner herself,
and has been very active (and is therefore very experienced in) a number of Neighbourhood plans including
Wing and more recently Worminghall. Sally joined our last meeting and is already steering us in the right
direction. We have also been successful in getting the Parish formally designated by AVDC as a Neighbourhood
Planning Area.

We hope the plan itself will be quite straight forward, but we need to consider may issues the village faces
(such as flooding and traffic), as well as those around the conservation areas, heritage buildings, and
development needs and areas. I mentioned in the last update the first stage is ‘evidence’ gathering and it
is intended to do an ‘audit’ of the housing stock within the village, and this should commence soon with the
intent that we complete it by the end of March. Consequently, members of the group will be calling on
every house in the village with a short survey for each household to complete. This can be completed
straight away with us or can be left with you but we do ask that it is returned to us quickly. It’s also an
opportunity for the team to meet face to face with everyone and explain our aims and hear your views and
concerns, so these can also be taken into account as we move forward. From the evidence we will then set
our clear objectives, and these will help to determine the policies we put forward in a consultative way to
everyone in the village.

We have also identified that as we move into the preparation of the plan it would be beneficial to have a
graphic designer in the team, so if there is anyone in the village with these skills that would like to join us
please let me know.

For more information or if you would like to help with this exciting project please contact me

VISION FOR ICKFORD – NEIGHBOURHOOD DEVELOPMENT PLAN
www.visionforickford.co.uk