Local Business? Neighbourhood Plan Team needs input

Logo of the West Bergholt Neighbourhood Plan project
Our village & parish life in our hands

Local Business Survey

If you run a local business we need your help to shape the future of West Bergholt. Please take a few minutes to complete a questionnaire by clicking on:

Your response will be invaluable to assisting the production of a Neighbourhood Plan for our village and wider parish area.  Neighbourhood Plans are fairly new and you may not have heard of them yet.  They form part of Neighbourhood Planning which is a Government initiative which enables local communities to produce Development plans for their areas rather than for these to be produced by District Councils, in our case Colchester Borough Council.

So what exactly is Neighbourhood Planning?

Neighbourhood Planning is a new right for communities to create agreed policies and proposals for their localities. For us this will be for West Bergholt and surrounding Parish area.

The plan will be used to decide the future of the development of West Bergholt including answering the following :

  • where should new houses, shops or employment areas be built?
  • should they be built?
  • do we want further community assets and amenities?
  • should we preserve existing open spaces and provide more?
  • Aside from development aspects what other improvements do you want to see in areas such as traffic, policing, environmental improvements etc?

The list could be endless – but is nevertheless of vital importance and must be made and agreed by you.

Who is responsible for preparing the plan?

The Plan is sponsored by the Parish Council but the steering group overseeing the plan is drawn from the wider community and comprises 20 people drawn from all walks of life. A full listing of FAQs has been assembled on the village website, look for the Neighbourhood Plan tab.

In order to inform the NP a series of surveys is being conducted. We have already conducted a household community survey and a survey of younger people’s views is under way. However we recognise that the village and wider parish area has a large number of businesses and we are keen to get a view of your needs and concerns so that we can plan not just for community needs such as housing and amenities, but also the needs of businesses.

Please complete the on-line questionnaire by the end of February 2014.  If you need to find out more please contact any of the following:

Contacts: Paul Downer ([antibot mailto=”[email protected]”]) Chris Stevenson ([antibot mailto=”[email protected]”]) Murray Harlow ([antibot mailto=”[email protected]”])

Supporting Local BusinessesWe look forward to reading your responses.

Are you listed on our Local Businesses Page – contact Murray Harlow (see above) if not?

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