The forthcoming referendum:
WHAT IT IS NOT
- It is important to understand that this is a referendum, NOT an election.
- As such, no group or individual(s) are being ‘voted in’; your ward councillors will continue to represent Hoylake in exactly the same way.
- Unlike the recent EU referendum, once in place, it is NOT irreversible: it will be reviewed and renewed every five years.
- If successful at referendum, the next iteration of the plan will be in 2020, having commenced in 2015.
- However if unsucessful at referendum the plan process will end and the NDP will cease to have any effect. Hoylake Vision will no longer exist.
WHAT IT IS
- There is a single question on which you are being asked to vote: “Do you want Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council to use the neighbourhood plan for Hoylake to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area?”
- You will therefore be choosing whether or not to adopt a local plan which will inform future planning decisions.
- The plan has been developed according to local wishes, and on the basis of local consultation. The referendum is the final stage of that process.
- All priorities and policies in the plan are evidence-based and supported by local consultation which is recorded in the Consultation Statement.
- The role of Hoylake Vision Community Planning Forum management group is to manage the consultation process and create the policies on the basis of that evidence, in consultation with the wider forum and the community at large.
HOW AN NDP WORKS
- The plan cannot facilitate development that existing planning legislation would not permit.
- The plan can determine what development goes where and what it looks like.
- The plan can encourage particular kinds of development and discourage others.
- The plan makes clear local wishes and prioritises those where they do not conflict with existing local and national policy for example greenbelt policy.
- Prospective developers in an NDP area are advised to consider NDP policies BEFORE proposing developments, since council officers and decision makers will also be required to do so when reviewing such proposals.
- Proposals that do not comply with NDP policies WILL be refused.
- This means prospective developers need to take into account local wishes when putting forward proposals, IN ADDITION TO existing local plans and policies.
- So, for example, in the case of Alderley Road Presbyterian Church, the NDP would support residential conversion of the existing building under the right conditions, but would not support demolition in the context of the currently proposed plans.
Please feel free to send further questions to consultation@hoylakevision.org.uk and we will respond as quickly as possible.
