RCC has had extensive involvement with this project every since the land was promoted for development as part of an emerging Neighbourhood Plan (NP). The NP process was subject to extensive scrutiny and public consultation and eventually there was overwhelming support in the village for this to be the only site to be allocated for housing as part of the NP. The whole NP process was extremely positive and an excellent example of how housing development can happen in a village with all parties working together.
Our role then was to start preparing the outline planning application which involved working with a large number of specialist consultants (architects, landscape architects, highway engineers, drainage experts, ecologists, heritage consultants etc.) to bring the whole proposal together with a resulting detailed illustrative layout, as seen above.
We also had to organise and take part in community involvement events as the proposed scheme was worked up so as to ensure we continued to receive local support. At the same time we were also engaged with the planning officer and their colleagues as part of a a formal pre-application planning enquiry process. This was overall a time consuming and complicated process and one that RCC had to manage on behalf of our client.
We eventually got to a position where there was local support and officer support and the application didn't even have to go to the planning committee with the local councillor agreeing to the application being approved under delegated powers. This scale of application going through under delegated powers is very unusual and a testament to how well produced NP's and early engagement with local residents can really work in the planning process.
