Bentworth Parish Neighbourhood Plan

In the January issue of “The Villager” we thanked parishioners for attending the 28th November Public Meeting in such large numbers. We also invited comments on the draft Vision, Objectives, Policies and Community Aspiration, which we had presented at that meeting.

164 Expressions of Preference forms were handed in following the meeting, a further welcome indication of community engagement. We have now had a chance to analyse these forms. They give the following picture:

86% in favour of one site

95% in favour of affordable housing

first preferences for individual sites as follows:

• 34% for site BTW001 (corner of Church Street and Ashley Road)
• 40% for site BTW002 (Top Field, Glebe Fields)
• 18% for site BTW003 (Station Road)
• 5% for site BTW004 (Drury Lane)
• 0% for site BTW005 (Park Lodge, Holt End)
• 2% for site BTW006a (Homestead, New Copse)

We were thus presented with a pretty clear sense of what parishioners would like to see: a single site, with affordable housing and development of either BTW001 or BTW002.

We are therefore looking more closely at these two sites and further refining our Vision, Objectives, Policies and Community Aspirations to take account of comments from parishioners, East Hampshire District Council and our consultants.

There has regrettably been a misunderstanding in relation to the Cricket Ground. The Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee would like to apologise for this error and state clearly that it has no intention of including this land in the Committee’s proposals for designated green spaces (draft Policy 4.1). All future versions of the Vision, Objectives, Policies and Community Aspirations will contain no reference to the Cricket Ground.

For those interested in knowing more, we are posting further material on the Public Meeting and the analysis of the Expressions of Preference forms on the Parish Council website.

Anyone who would like to contact the Steering Committee can do so by sending an email to us at neighbourhoodplan@bentwortparishcouncil.org

We will continue to keep parishioners posted on progress. But for now, thanks again for all your interest.

Boyd McCleary

[Please note that this message is not posted on behalf of Bentworth Parish Council and does not necessarily reflect the Parish Council’s policy]