Work has commenced through Town Councillors, local businesses, local community organisations and indivual volunteers to assess the needs for Congleton’s future up to 2030 through a Neighbourhood Plan; to be submitted to Cheshire East Council, inspectied by the government and then to be voted upon by the community in a local referendum before becoming ‘adopted’.
The first of several consultations for the Congleton Neighbourhood Plan is in the form of a questionnaire took place in May 2015 (for results click here) with a second, more comprehensive questionnaire being issued before Christmas 2015 to be completed by 25th January 2016 (for results click here).
The Plan and its development: http://www.mycongleton.org
The Questionnaire for completion ONLINE: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MyCongletonNP1st
Protect Congleton-Civic Society is one of the groups participating in the work involved in preparing the plan. Jenny is our representative and she is chairing the Housing sub-group and also sits on the cross-parish group. The usefulness of Neighbourhood Plans is sometimes questioned, but it is still unclear when the Local Plan will be in place and it is hoped that a Neighbourhood Plan will provide some protection for the town and surrounding areas in a planning process which is currently very much dominated by developers, provided it can be adopted in 2016 and in advance of the CEC Local Plan.
People who live in this town have a right to have their say and this is your opportunity. We can do very little to challenge strategic decisions that have been taken at borough or national level, but we can try to help to shape and determine some of the decisions, so please don’t waste the opportunity to vote in the local referendum when announced, it’s your future in Congleton!
History:
Congleton Town Council applied to Cheshire East Council in 2014 to register as a district for a Neighbourhood Plan. The first stage of this process was to designate Congleton’s Neighbourhood Area (map of Neighbourhood Area). The Neighbourhood Plan, once completed, will form a blueprint for what happens in our town over the plan period.
The application to designate the Congleton Neighbourhood Area was approved at a meeting of the Cabinet Member for Housing and Jobs at Cheshire East Council held on 6-Nov-14 as per map link in the first paragraph above.