Blewbury Neighbourhood Plan
(Updated 14 May 2015) Thanks to all who came out to the feedback event on 28th February at the village hall. The day was a huge success with well over 100 people attending across both sessions and plenty of excellent questions and discussion points.
As promised, we are sharing the exhibition display materials for all to download and review at leisure:
Housing needs survey – event display posters
Landscape analysis – event display posters
PowerPoint slides (includes an explanation of the terminology used in the landscape analysis)
The discussion from those who attended the two presentations is summarised here:
Notes of questions and issues raised
We have put up a short summary of the hundreds of comments people wrote in their surveys:
Housing needs survey – summary of open-ended written comments
You can also download the full Housing Needs Survey results, with data for all questions rather than the few we highlighted at the event:
Housing needs survey – full results
Blewbury Neighbourhood Plan 
Along with landscape capacity, is any consideration given to what might be called ‘social’ or ‘economic’ capacity? We all worry about the sustainability of pubs, shops, bus services and community activities. There must be a correlation between these things and the size and demography of the village and, in turn, between these and the scale and nature of the built environment. I suspect the relationships are complex, but does the plan have any regard to these things?
Thank you Steve, that’s a good question. We are certainly trying to take into account the social and economic consequences of the policies we develop. As you suggest it would be difficult to build an econometric model to measure this and we are certainly not going to try!
However what we are doing is speaking to the school, Church and businesses in order to see what their views are. If it was felt that the size and demographic profile of the village was making it difficult to support, for example, the school, shops or pub we would certainly take this into account.
Does that answer your question?
Dermot Mathias
4.3.15
Hi Dermot. I hope you are well.
Looks like all is moving forward impressively!
I am sure somebody will have picked up the following article through GOV.UK or Locality, on the £22million of funding coming forwards for Neighbourhood Development Planning; https://www.gov.uk/government/news/22-million-funding-to-boost-neighbourhood-planning
Is there a view shared by Blewbury/Locality on whether this funding can be accessed at this stage for the NDP?
Best, Jonathan Townsend
Thank you Jon, it’s good to hear from you. Elaine did tell me about this but I haven’t checked it out yet. We have already had £7000 grant from Locality and £10000 from the VOWH. Therefore it is possible that we will not need any more.
I hope you are well.
Regards
Dermot