COLNE Town Councillors are urging all residents and visitors to the town to comment on their Draft Colne Plan before the end of the Consultation Period, which ends on 30thJune.
The Plan is a pivotal document for the development and protection of the town and its magnificent countryside, and will set the agenda for Colne until 2030. Pendle Borough Council has devolved the allocation of land for housing to the Town Council as it develops its Neighbourhood Plan in parallel with Pendle Borough Council’s Local Plan Part II.
The Working Group, which consists of residents’ Groups, such as The Waterside Neighbourhood Action Group, Lidgett & Beyond and The Horsfield Residents’ Association, as well as councillors, has been working on The Plan, refining its policies and building up its evidence for 18 months.
Chairman of The Neighbourhood Plan Working Group, Cllr Sarah Cockburn-Price, explained: “This is real grassroots planning. We need everyone to comment. It could be a single sentence of support, or it could be a detailed analysis of one or more of our six themes. If you care about Colne, its heritage, its facilities, its town centre, its green spaces, its transport or how it will grow, we want you to have your say!”
The whole plan can be viewed across several dedicated pages on the Town Council’s web site: www.new.colnetowncouncil.org.uk/neighbourhood-plan/ The e-mail address to write to with your support or comments is: [email protected]
Many people will have seen the poster campaign the Group has run across the town and social media, with the themes of the town centre, heritage and growth. Now, the focus has shifted to green spaces. The Plan has a series of policies for each theme and the green spaces theme lists Colne’s beauty spots for protection, as well as key sightlines. Next week, the theme shifts to Community Facilities, with Steven Burke as the “face” of the poster campaign.
Funding for Colne’s Neighbourhood Plan has been provided from central Government. Neighbourhood Plans are written by the local community, the people who best know and love the area, rather than the Local Planning Authority. They are a powerful tool to ensure communities get the right types of development, in the right place and so are important documents with real legal force. They therefore have certain formal procedures that they must go through to be passed and the level response generated during the consultation phase is one of the elements that comes under scrutiny.
