FAQs

At the start of the project the PC agreed a budget contribution of £2000. This is recorded in the PC minutes of 4th November 2013. None of this money has been used. The steering group raised grants to support the production of the plan. In fact, a little of the grant funding sourced by the steering group to produce the plan (£337.79) is still unused at 03 July 2017.

The cost of preparing the plan so far has been approximately £12000. This was financed from grants that were applied for totalling £12247. The grants have been given by Locality, Groundworks, Duke of Lancaster & Champion Bowland and finance detail will be shown on Parish Council website at completion.

The Parish Precept over the last few years is as follows:

Kirkwell’s costs have been £6260 excluding VAT. The contract with Kirkwell’s includes a further £600 for further work that the examiner might request.

Both the draft plan and the final submission version were made available to all councillors. The PC at its meeting on 5 January 2015 agreed that the draft plan go forward to a formal public consultation.10 councillors were at the meeting and the vote was almost unanimous with one against in favour of the draft plan being submitted to the public consultation process which took place from 19th January 2015 until the 1 March 2015. After this the final submission plan was produced and a presentation made to councillors on 5th September 2016. Councillors then approved the plan to go forward to the next stage of consultation on October 3rd, 2016. The second consultation period was arranged by RVBC and the consultation results and plan documentation is now with the examiner.

Full details of the voting results can be found below.

The Kirkwell’s representative did not vote. The top table voting was from the three presenters, the secretary of the meeting and the person collecting the proformas from the tables.

Issues raised by residents at various consultation meetings included the need for affordable homes for both young and older residents. As Kirkwell’s explained at a PC meeting the current legislation only insists on affordable homes for developments of 10 or more houses. In BBB, we are proposing a maximum of eight dwellings and so affordable housing legislation will not apply. However, the estate owner wishes for a mixture of retirement and starter homes and has proposed that he would insist on covenants being written into any agreements for development to ensure that this happens. See letter from the Bolton Hall Estate by clicking below.

The Steering Group held many consultation meetings with residents. Pages 12 to 14 of the submission version of the plan (view below) contains a summary of the consultation. In addition, a consultation statement was prepared for the examiner and this can also be seen below.

Subject to its adoption, The Neighbourhood Plan will become part of the Ribble Valley Core Strategy.

The Plan will need to be consulted whenever planning and development decisions are made which impact on the designated area.

The topics covered by the Neighbourhood Plan include:

• Transport
• Communications
• Housing
• Environment
• Employment
• Business
• Tourism

Although our villages and hamlets are Tier 2 we still need to consider the above issues to secure the sustainability of our villages in the future.

Yes, the plan contains information about community facilities (Page 34 to 36). Appendix D of the plan, Page 54, also contains a list of Parish Actions to improve amenities for residents. A good example is the heritage trail where work has already begun and is being supported by the PC. The Heritage Trail has been a feature of the area for 30 years, but the parish is not in a time warp and tourism is to be encouraged in order to allow others to share the beauty of the area. The Heritage Trail is an updated version of a booklet now out of print, which will assist with this.

Some redacting has been done to protect the identity and data of residents. The amount of redaction required depends upon the number of documents that need to be dealt with. For example, 3 days’ work by the clerk would cost approximately £600 using the costs recommended by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

There were different views expressed from all residents in the NP designated area. Holden did its own survey of residents to gather their views about the NP and the issues that affected them most. The draft plan was modified extensively, particularly the issues relating to roads and footpaths. It is interesting to note that of the 20 people in Holden that returned surveys 11 of them expressed the view that new housing in BBB should be left to BBB residents to decide and 2 supported new development.