The public consultation on the latest stage of the Local Plan process is now closed.
The comments that were made by the public are now visible. Click HERE to see what people said. Click on the ‘What people say’ tab, then click on the eye symbol within the consultation document.
There were more than 1,600 comments made by about 313 persons or organisations. As well as comments by the public, there are many comments by developers and also comments by charities, businesses, Parish Councils and public agencies.
Comments expressing the need to provide supporting infrastructure, employment and other facilities for the number of new houses were the most common public response. Climate change and protecting biodiversity were also very important to a large number of respondents.
There were more objections than support for all the locations identified for housing in the Preferred Option. Probably the key question in the consultation was the one about the scale and distribution of housing. This received more than twice as many objections as support and much of the support was qualified, particularly requiring the provision of infrastructure.
Why should I bother to take part in the public consultation - will it change anything?
Well - it did last time!
On 15th October 2020 Council voted in support of a preferred strategic option for housing to include a new settlement to take about 2,000 new houses. Although the vicinity of the Parish of Churcham was mentioned, it was only put forward as a suggestion and the vote was not related to any particular location. The Govt. process requires that many strategies are explored so that the best can be chosen, so the new settlement could have ended up somewhere else completely, or if a suitable location could not be found, then the new settlement would have had to be removed from the strategy.
A public consultation on the issue was opened on 22nd October, which ran for over 3 months. A concentrated campaign by the residents and Parish Council of Churcham successfully encouraged a large number of negative comments in the public consultation. Following this reaction, the responsible Cabinet member, Cllr Tim Gwilliam, decided to look for a completely new strategic option rather than to explore any possible locations for a new settlement. The result is the current proposal for Lydney and for the villages to take the majority of the new houses.
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We will see if this current proposal is taken through to the next stage of the process or whether it will also attract a large number of negative comments and be abandoned, as was the previous proposal.