Feedback on Copeland Planning meeting

About forty or fifty people turned up in Whitehaven civic hall this evening for the public meeting about the new local plan for Copeland.

Under laws passed by John Prescott, the new style set of documents is called a "Local Development Framework" or LDF.

Formally this was a consultation on the preferred options document which will be used to write a "Core Strategy" around what sort of development Copeland as planning authority will promote.

Examples of the proposed planning policies on which the council is asking for comments from residents are guidelines for where in the Borough (outside the national park) housing development should go. The proposal in the consultation document is that the council should aim for the following mix:

47% in Whitehaven

10% each in Egremont and Cleator Moor

12% in Millom

21% in 12 larger village areas which are allocated as "local centres," namely

* Arlecdon/Rowrah
* Beckermet
* Bigrigg
* Cleator
* Distington
* Frizington
* Haverigg
* Kirkland/Ennerdale Bridge
* Lowca/Parton
* Moor Row
* Moresby Parks
* Seascale
* St Bees.

Do you have a view on whether this makes sense? If so please write and let the council know.

Many of the people who came to the meeting were residents of the Bay Vista or Highlands areas who were concerned about some of the sites shown as potentially being allocated for housing in some of Copeland Council's working documents, available on the Copeland Council website. There will be public consultation in a few month's time on what specific sites should be allocated for housing under a process called, wait for it, the

Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment.

Some people call this the "SHLAA". I think that sounds silly, so I call the documents by the stages of the process they have reached. There are three parts to the process: "The first sieve," which the officers have done, to reject the most obviously unsuitable sites, the "Second sieve" which the officers are about to start, to knock out a few more, and the final recommendations which will be included in a public consultation for a "Site Allocations Development Plan Document" in a few month's time.

The document which is upsetting a number of Whitehaven residents is the "First Sieve" document, because a number of controversial proposed sites in North East Whitehaven about which they have concerns have not yet been rejected.

If you have views about any aspect of the consultation, or about the proposed housing site allocations, please do make them known. You can email the council at ldf@copelandbc.gov.uk or write to John Hughes, the council's Strategic Planning manager at Copeland Borough Council, Catherine Street, Whitehaven CA28 7SJ.

Or you can attend one of the remaining public consultation meetings, which are to be held as follows:

Mid Copeland: Thursday 24th June at 7pm, Seascale Methodist Hall.

North East Copeland: Tuesday 29th June at 7pm, Cleator Moor Civic Hall.

South Copeland: Tuesday 13th July at 7pm, Millom Network Centre.

In the area where the Lake District National Park is the local planning authority they will be adopting their own Local Development Framework and will be holding a seperate consultation on what it should contain.

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