Monthly Archives: June 2018

Steering Group Meetings

Steering Group Meeting 26th June 2018

NOTES

 

Notes from meeting with Volunteers from June 2nd Open Day,

Held on Monday 25th June, 2018, at the Baptist Chapel, Hackleton.

Present: Cllrs Roy Hawkesford, Tina Charteress and Tom Peterkin; steering group members Maz Woolley and Carol Lloyd; Revd Jennie Lee; Stuart McDonald (Horton resident), Dave Smith (Hackleton), Chris Harris (Preston Deanery), Paul Streeter, Diane Ward and John Ward (all Piddington).

Apologies were received from Gary Youens (Wootton Fields), Cllr Fran Billingham, and from Anna Palmberg (Piddington, steering group member)

Roy Hawkesford used his notes as the basis for a presentation of where we are in the development of the Plan, there were many useful comments and questions asked by the members of public who attended. In particular, Dave Smith asked how we intended to contact people who don’t have access to the internet and are harder to reach. He expressed an interest in joining the steering group, as did Paul Streeter.

Maz Woolley talked about the website and communication with the public in general, and Carol Lloyd talked about the results from the questionnaire – which can be seen on the Neighbourhood Plan website, hpnp,org.uk, along with the statistical data presented by Roy Hawkesford.

Thanks to Revd Jennie Lee for hosting the meeting.

The meeting finished at 8.15.

 

 

 

Notes for meeting with Volunteers from June 2nd Open Day,

Held on Monday 25th June, 2018, at the Baptist Chapel.

  1. April 2017, first meeting, in the Annexe, to explain what a NP can and can’t do. In response to Framptons map. Unanimous support to proceed.
  2. PC approval given to bid to be designated a Neighbourhood Area – to include the whole parish.
  3. A PC SG team (volunteers) was established and we met with other PC’s that had done/were doing Plans to get an idea of what was required.
  4. On a recommendation from Roade PC, we appointed a consultant, Michael Wellock, who has extensive experience in the field of NPs.
  5. A meeting was arranged at Horton Cricket Club on October 9th to explain progress and recruit members of the public to the Steering Group. Notable recruits: Maz and Carol.
  6. SNC approved our bid on October 18th.
  7. First meeting with Michael Wellock on October 26th. It was decided that we should apply for a grant to offset his fees. We were ultimately successful in that application and the follow-up one this month. The structure of the Plan was explained to us and what our role as a SG was: to flesh out the skeleton which Michael will provide. The importance of gathering evidence and the need for parish-wide communication were emphasised.
  8. Contact was made with SNC’s new NP Development Officer, Ellie Gingell, and a meeting was arranged to establish how she could support us and what her priorities are. (She will scrutinise our Draft Plan.)  She pointed out what was distinctive about our parish: five areas of habitation, which should be dealt with separately, while having overarching themes.
  9. She also stressed evidence and communication. It is clear, however, that she does not really favour Michael’s ‘generic’ approach; she would like something more bespoke.
  10. One key area of dispute has been the need (or otherwise) for a Housing Needs Assessment and, if desirable after that exercise, a Site Assessment. Given the tightening up of  NPs, as shown in the National Planning Policy Framework, they strongly recommend undertaking a HNA.
  11. The Open Day, June 2nd, was part of the parish-wide consultation. It made our SG think deeply about what we thought the Plan should contain. Much work and many meetings went into the exhibition that you saw. NN Pulse, Forum, every house leafleted… I’ve spent many days reading all the background reports and statements relating to NPs, and the ‘political’ context for the Plan, which was on display
  12. The website has been the work of Maz Woolley, with all of us contributing to the content. It has been a democracy, but Maz has been the editor for this project – and a great job he’s done. All of the findings from the questionnaire have been analysed and can now be seen ‘live’!
  13. The time commitment has been high, leading up to the Open Day and its aftermath. The work will proceed in spurts, as we identify jobs to be done.
  14. We would like you to think about what you might be able to offer the SG. (We’ve had some good people who just could not give sufficient time.). There could be different levels of involvement and commitment, depending on how much time you could commit to meetings and doing work in groups or from home.
  15. Maz Woolley to talk about the website which contains records of everything we have done so far. Essential reading for new recruits!

Roy Hawkesford,

June 25th, 2018.

Public Communication

Questionnaire feedback

Analysis of Questionnaire

Part One – The numbers

By Cllr Roy Hawkesford

284 people attended the event and at the point when the analysis took place 185 questionnaires had been returned.  In some cases the 1-6 figures were not entered, or were not completed in the way requested. That gives a ‘correct’ completion rate of 73% of all 185 questionnaires.

I will look at the answers to the simple questions first:

MUGA (Multi User Games Area)

Here there were 174 in favour and 20 against. This means that 89% of the respondents were in favour of the MUGA.

Housing:

The feedback from the questionnaire was as follows:

Infill Only 98 – 62%
Outside Confines Only 17 – 10%
Both Infill and Outside 44 – 27%

This shows that most people would accept appropriate infill or even some expansion but this has to be set against concerns elsewhere that there is the infrastructure to support the expansion.

What is most important:

When the correctly completed forms were analysed the scores were as shown below.

Score Percentage
Parish Characteristics 613 21.8%
Our Countryside 604 21.5%
Our Community Facilities  467 16.6%
Housing  448 15.9%
Recreational Facilities 413 14.68%
Local Employment 268 9.5%

A bar chart shows the ranking more clearly:

We then used the forms that were entered incorrectly to see if adding them in would have any impact on the scoring. As it happened the scores remained ranked in exactly to same way.

It’s easy to see in broad terms that the first two are clear ‘winners’, as you might expect in a large rural parish with considerable number of green areas (including farmland). It is also clear that people feel protective about the villages and their respective character.

As not too many young people came to the event, it may be assumed that nearly everyone who attended already had a house and a job or pension; despite this, housing did attract much interest and many favoured having more affordable housing. Only one person said: “We’re full”! Most people I spoke to were not against having an independent housing needs assessment.

Local employment may have fared least well because it may have implied creating ‘factories’ or work place buildings, seemingly against the first two on our list. The point is that more people are working from home and that better broadband and mobile phone signal were seen by many as a priority. There was also a lot of concern about the infrastructure, especially the road network.

Recreational facilities, though in fifth place on the list, were regarded as important by many for the benefit of young and the elderly. This needs greater exploration, to ascertain what exactly people want, but its clear that the MUGA got the thumbs up from the vast majority of people. Some of those against lived adjacent to where it would be located.

We received a clear message about what was important to the majority of people, and this should influence our approach to the Plan. While there are overarching issues, each ‘village’ has its own character which should be approached separately within the Plan. Having five separate settlements is a distinct feature of our parish.

Finally, the message about sustainability seems to have got across quite well, regarding the countryside, the villages and the community as a whole. I think our exhibition did explain the wider implications and advantages of having a Neighbourhood Plan in place and that it was favourably received. Most seemed very positive about what they read and saw and wanted to be kept informed.

If the purpose of the Open Day was to communicate, to give people their say, and to gather evidence, then I think it was a real success.

Part Two – Analysing the comments

By Carol Lloyd

We received a considerable amount of written feedback which has been read in detail. In order to analyse the responses people made on the six key areas, shown below, we needed to identify the dominant themes. To do this we used a tool which generates  visual ‘word clouds’. The first step is to create a set of ‘tag words and phrases’ from the feedback and where a tag, or one with a similar meaning, is found a count is kept. The tags and counts are then fed into software and it arranges the tags sized according to the their count. This allows us to identify particular tags which are reflected most strongly in the feedback.

Character and Environment

The results of this highlight the concerns many had that development should not outpace the infrastructure needed to support it. It also re-enforced the numerical feedback by suggesting people wish to retain the rural and village character and to keep development ‘in tune’ with the local character.

Community Facilities

The comments on local facilities suggest that many are satisfied with them but that facilities for the young and old need to be developed. Several other topics were common enough to need considering when we start work on the plan.

Countryside and Natural Resources

People clearly make use of the local area for recreation with Salcey Forest featuring strongly. Again some good indicators of topics the steering group will need to consider.

Housing

Where people agreed that housing was needed they clearly wanted to keep a mix of properties to encourage young people and ‘downsizers’ to be part of the villages. Again concerns about infrastructure were identified.

Local Employment

Some conflicting feedback here. What is quite clear is home working and broadband will be an important part of the future. There seems to be support for small businesses and rural units but people do not seem to expect large levels of local employment.

MUGA

 

What is clear from this is that people are concerned about which groups will get access to it and the level of management and upkeep that it will need. Car Parking for users is also a concern.

Conclusion

The work clouds support the conclusions drawn by Cllr Hawkesford about the numerical responses to these topics but also provide some areas which need further consideration by both the Parish Council and the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group.

Public Communication

Latest News 17/6/18

Our virtual exhibition is now live! It covers most of the key material shown at the event and should allow you to browse the different topics in the same sequence that was used at the Village Hall.

If you didn’t manage to get to the event then please use the virtual exhibition to find out what we consulted on. You may even complete the questionnaire we used at the hall online. If you went to the event and want to revisit any topic or to complete a questionnaire feel free to do so.

Of course it will not be possible to talk to us in the way you could on the day but you may fill in the website’s contact form and send us questions that you have and we will get back to you.

For those of you who volunteered to join the steering group at the event you should get an email informing you that the next meeting will be at the chapel in Hackleton on Monday 25th June at 19:00.

 

Public Communication

Neighbourhood Plan Volunteers

Thank you to all of you who signed up to help us create the Neighbourhood Plan at our recent Neighbourhood Plan event. Emails are being sent to let you know that a meeting for all volunteers is to be held on Monday 25th June. The venue is currently being booked and confirmation of where it will be posted later.

At that session we hope to introduce people to what a plan is in more detail and introduce the process that we expect to follow. We also hope to find out what skills our volunteers can bring to the work we have to do. Finally we need to identify whether people have specific interests or whether their time is limited so their participation may be focused on a smaller range of activities which fits in with their available time or interests.

When reviewing the questionnaires we have had a couple where we are not completely sure of the email address. Next time we will make sure that our questionnaire is easier to write on! So if you are expecting us to contact you  and you haven’t heard anything please email neighbourhoodplan@hackletonparishcouncil.gov.uk.

Finally if you didn’t manage to attend the event but wish to join our team of volunteers then please email  neighbourhoodplan@hackletonparishcouncil.gov.uk. so we can give you the details of the upcoming meeting.

Public Communication

Some more pictures of the Event held on June 2nd 2018

 

Just a few shots to show how busy the event was with over 280 people visiting and a large proportion of visitors completing the questionnaire.

The breakout tables in the centre of the room were well used to stop for a tea and cake, a chat, or just to complete the questionnaire.

Many visitors spent a lot of time reading the material we had prepared.

Whilst some took the opportunity to ask questions  about what they had seen.

 

For whatever reason that you came our team there on the day hope that you found it informative. We have now to go on to start serious work on the plan over the next few months.

Finally if you didn’t manage to get to the event we hope to have a set of pages allowing you to see the material presented at the event and to submit a questionnaire online. This will take us a while to get ready but we will post again when it is available.

Public Communication, Public Consultation

Initial Analysis of Questionnaires completed at the Plan Event on June 2nd 2018

By Roy Hawkesford

 

I have completed an initial analysis of the questionnaires and the findings are encouraging.

  • 284 of you attended the event
  • 200 questionnaires, so far, have been returned

The overwhelming response was very positive, in terms of the presentation and what the Parish Council, through the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, is trying to achieve on your behalf.

The display will shortly be available to view on the website and the questionnaire will be there too, if you haven’t already completed it.

We have started to evaluate all of your written comments, but , in the meantime, we thought you might be interested to see some initial statistical findings.

  • 170 (85%) of you were in favour of the MUGA, 20 (10%) against.

If you felt that more housing was needed:

  • 96 (48%) were in favour of Infill only
  • 17 (8%) favoured Outside Confines only
  • 42 (22%) were in favour of both Infill and Outside Confines.

Only a handful actually said you did not want any more housing.

How you rated the six topics, in terms of importance:

  1. Parish Character and Environment
  2. Our Countryside and Natural Resources
  3. Our Community Facilities
  4. Housing
  5. Recreational Facilities
  6. Local Employment

The first two were clear ‘winners’; the next three were close; Local Employment did not fare as well.

  • 28 of you indicated that you would like to join the Steering Group!

In the light of that, we will arrange a meeting for those people to hear in more detail what the group does, what it entails in terms of time, and what skills or specialist knowledge we are looking for. But, before we do that, the existing group members will carry out a full evaluation of what you said in the questionnaire and meet with our consultant to ascertain what we need to be working on next.

We will contact all of you through the email addresses you supplied shortly. Because of the problems with the pens and the form itself, some of the addresses were not as easy to decipher as others. If you haven’t heard anything by the end of the month, it would be useful if you could contact our Clerk with your details.

Finally, 284 is a very high turnout for such an event, and I would like to thank you all for coming to find out about and lend your support to the work we are doing on your behalf. It is a really exciting and challenging project that we hope will result in a parish that we can all be proud of.

Public Consultation

Neighbourhood Plan Event Saturday 2nd 2018

282! That is the number of people that we counted attending yesterday’s event. The Chairman of the Parish Council Roy Hawkesford and all the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group would like to thank you for coming and for the time most of you spared to complete our questionnaire.

Don’t forget that you can volunteer to get involved in the creation of the plan, either as a member of the group or as a “contributor” who reviews the material as we produce it, perhaps from a specialist point of view. Simply use the contact form on the web site to get in touch.

For those of you who couldn’t get along to the event we hope to have an online version of the exhibition shortly. We will also get an online version of the questionnaire available so that your views can be heard.

Finally here is a small gallery of what went on yesterday. Click on any image to enlarge it. We will have more pictures of the day later when we have an online exhibition.