Bookham Community gets involved in Local Planning Project
Bookham Community gets involved in Local Planning Project |
Following 6 months of publicity and promotion by a 13-strong start-up group, a further 43 local residents and workers have come forward to create the Bookham Neighbourhood Forum. They are a representative cross-section of Bookham’s population and they will consider the development needs of their village over the next 15-20 years. Bookham has been well known in recent years through the Bookham Vision project for its strength of community engagement. This has been borne out once again by the willingness of busy local people from a wide variety of backgrounds who care enough about the future of their village to dedicate valuable spare time to this project. The role of the Bookham Neighbourhood Forum is to examine and discuss research and proposals covering housing, business and infrastructure development and then to reach a set of conclusions to be published as a draft Neighbourhood Development Plan. The research and proposals will be prepared over the next 12-18 months by a Task Force consisting of the members of the former start-up group. The plan is to have a draft NDP in place by mid-2013, ready for external inspection by a qualified Planning Inspector. This draft Plan will then be distributed to everyone in Bookham and voted on in a referendum, so that ultimately everyone in Bookham will be involved in its future. Bookham residents can keep touch by subscribing to the regular Bookham Vanguard email newsletter at info@bookhamvanguard.co.uk, joining Bookham Vanguard’s Twitter feed @bookhamvanguard, keeping up to date with news on the website www.bookhamvanguard.co.uk and attending the Public Meetings that will be held to explain the project’s progress at regular intervals. For more information please contact: Cathryn Hossack, Secretary & Promotions, Bookham Neighbourhood Forum, info@bookhamvanguard.co.uk 07777 662929 Denis Loretto, Promotions, Bookham Neighbourhood Forum, denis@loretto2.freeserve.co.uk 01372 453276 |
An amazing 56 volunteers gathered together on Saturday 4th February at the Old Barn Hall to start the process of producing a Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) for Bookham. This is part of the Government’s Localism initiative to give local people more control over development in their neighbourhoods and Bookham is one of the first in the UK to get under way.