Dear Wickhambrook Residents
This is an advanced warning of events very important to Wickhambrook that will happen in 2022. As you probably know, West Suffolk Council published a Local Plan in September 2020 that laid out a procedure for estimating how much development will occur in Wickhambrook Parish up until 2040. The next phase is where potential sites will be chosen. In response, Wickhambrook Parish Council has formed a working group of residents and councillors to develop a Neighbourhood Plan, one that reflects how you would like to see Wickhambrook develop over the above time span.
A Neighbourhood Plan is a way for local people to influence the planning and development of the area in which they live and work. It will allow us to, for example:
- develop a shared vision and sense of ownership for our village
- choose where new homes and other development should be built
- influence how much housing (plots and numbers) we think should be built, and of what type
- identify and protect important local green spaces and heritage related assets.
As your first opportunity to influence the Neighbourhood Plan, you will be invited to complete a questionnaire early in 2022 and give your views about housing and other development in the village for the years ahead. You will also be asked to fill in a Housing Needs Survey as well as the Neighbourhood Plan Questionnaire. Please complete both of these items. The Neighbourhood Plan Questionnaire will influence housing development for the open market in Wickhambrook for the next 20 years. The Housing Needs Survey, on the other hand, is concerned specifically with the provision of small numbers of affordable homes, solely for people living in the village and their families. In addition, members of the Neighbourhood Plan working group will be setting up interviews in early 2022 with key stakeholders (people who run farms, businesses and services) to get their views. All three processes will run in parallel with and inform the West Suffolk Local Plan.
Please remember that any changes will not just affect the area within the settlement boundary but will also have an effect on other outlying parts of the Parish and indeed adjacent villages that rely on shared facilities.
Once approved, our plan will have legal force in setting out what development is acceptable and for what reasons. Developers and local authority planners will have to take notice of it. Without a Neighbourhood Plan, we will have little control over any development and associated change that takes place. Already, more than ten sites have been put forward for consideration and West Suffolk planners will let us know what their preferred options are in March 2022. Thus, it is important that everybody has a chance between now and then to have their say, so that we can put a coherent case forward on behalf of the Parish.
To become a valid document the final version of the Neighbourhood Plan will have to be voted through by residents in a referendum and finally endorsed by the Parish Council. It will then become a valid document that carries real legal weight and which all decision makers will be obliged to consider.
To do all of this we need as many of you as possible to fill in both the Neighbourhood Plan Questionnaire and the Housing Needs Survey forms. Please keep your eye on the Parish website and around the village for further developments, notices and information on how and where to submit information, which will be possible both on paper or online. Please let us know if you are willing to help us in any way. Open Meetings will be organised at critical stages to keep you informed and further information on the main factors that you need to consider will be posted on the website.