Update meeting: 7pm, Tuesday 14 October, Seahouses Sports and Community Centre

The Steering Group has been active since the launch event and has:

•      held conversations with local people and businesses to establish the main issues to be tackled; compared the changes in the census results of 2001 and 2011  to try and predict future trends; looked at other parts of the country with similar challenges to see what policies they have developed.

The Group is working closely with the County Council, who are providing technical and practical support to help us develop the plan.  The County Council is currently preparing a new Local Plan for Northumberland and we are working to ensure that the Local Plan will support the things that are important to us such as:

•      development is in an acceptable style; that we have a proper balance of second and holiday homes; and  that we can encourage business. 

We have developed a questionnaire survey to collect evidence required to support the policies and proposals likely to form part of the Neighbourhood Plan.   We would like to invite you to attend a consultation event and to complete the questionnaire survey which will be delivered to all houses in the parishes. The questionnaire survey will include questions about the following matters:

Your views on the vision and objectives for the Plan, a housing needs survey and a survey for second home owners.

 We are launching this on Tuesday 14 October at 7pm at the Seahouses Sports and Community Centre:

-         To tell you what we’ve done so far and answer questions;

-         To explain the survey;

-         To hear the experience of the Alnwick and Denwick group, who are about 2 years ahead of us. 

 

The availability of social housing is important in this area. We are therefore also arranging a drop in at the Methodist Church Hall on Wednesday 22 October, from 3pm to 6pm to explain how Homefinder, the County’s housing allocation system works.  

 

Logo

Seahouses First School helped us develope a logo for the neighbourhood plan. We asked them to design something to reflect the the three communities.

The children produced some excellent designs and it was with great difficulty that we chose one -
Congratulations Chloe.

As part of the work, they also produced a Kid's Guide to Seahouses - which is now on the Vsit Northumberland web site.

Thank you..

Housing Survey: The You Tube Diaries

During summer we will be preparing a housing survey to get a good understanding of people's needs.

One of the factors we'll be considering is the work done by the Development Trust in 2007 on affordable housing: the work and some of the issues were presented on video which can be found here on youtube.

They are an interesting snapshot of the problems faced at that time - problems which remain much the same now!

Business Survey

One of the important issues raised during the first phase of consultation was the question of supporting business and the need for more - and a greater variety of - employment.

We are therefore carrying out a survey of businesses to try to establish what issues they have in the area to identify where planning and development policies could help and what infrastructure or other needs they have. And also what works well.

Each of the businesses in the three villages has or will be given a survey, which can also be completed on line. We are issuing the following press release to explain a bit more; we will be writing separately to owners of holiday homes which are let to establish their views.

March 2014

CALLING ALL LOCAL BUSINESSES

The North Northumberland Coastal Area Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee has been working hard to engage with local businesses.  As part of its activities to produce the Neighbourhood Plan, a Business Needs Survey was recently distributed amongst organisations in the three villages of Bamburgh, Beadnell and Seahouses. 

The survey seeks to determine what the positive aspects of the local area are for businesses, as well as find out what negative aspects are perceived.  It also seeks views on the changing nature of businesses and aspirations for future business needs.  Collecting this information will help to develop policies in the plan which balance the needs of the business community as well as local residents, with sustainability underpinning everything that the plan will seek to achieve.

We are keen to reach all areas of the business community and are now calling on all businesses who may not have received a Business Needs Survey to assist us in providing their views.  To facilitate this more copies of the survey have been made available at the Seahouses Resource Centre, Main Street, Seahouses.  Please call in to the Resource Centre and pick up a copy so that you too can help to shape the local area to meet the needs of your business for the future.

Launch events

We had a formal launch of the neighbourhood plan at Seahouses Sports and Community Centre on Tuesday 22 January, followed by three drop in events at Seahouses, Bamburgh and Beadnell later in the week. Over 200 people - about 10% of the residents of the three villages - attended at least one of these events.

The general consensus from questions and discussions was that people were interested to see the community have a bigger say in the planning framework, although there was some cynicism about how effective it would really be.

There was a series of displays of information about the area and the neighbourhood planning process followed by an opportunity for people to give feedback on what they liked and what could be improved about the area. This was to give us a basis for deciding on the main themes for the neighbourhood plan. A summary is shown:

The steering commitee will be considering this, and all the other feedback and offers of help, at a meeting at the end of January to decide how to take things forward - but it is clear, and not surprising, that housing development and employment issues were seen as the most important.