Introduction & Guide to Land-use Planning Issues in Yateley

New Planning System

There has been a fundamental change in planning in recent years. At a local level the general public has understood the word planning to mean land-use planning controlled by the Development Control Committee of the Local Planning Authority (Hart in our case). Some people also knew that they could influence strategic land-use planning by objecting to Local Plans (written by their District Council) and Structure Plans (written by their County Council). Structure Plans and Local Plans are being swept away, although they will continue to influence development control decisions until the new plans are in place.

Regional Plans

There will now be no Structure Plans. The numbers of houses built will be proposed by Regional Assemblies, with the final say in the hands of the Deputy Prime Minister (OPDM). In the South East the regional assembly is the South East England Regional Assembly (SEERA) which governs a boomerang shaped piece of countryside from Canterbury to Aylesbury, including us in Hampshire. The region is governed from Guildford, and has its own civil service called Government Office for the South East (GOSE). The South East Regional Plan is currently going through its consultation processes. The Plan covers much more than numbers of dwellings to be built, but that is the aspect most people are likely to get worked up about.

District & Unitary Authority Plans

The old Local Plans are being swept away by a Local Development Framework. The word Framework means that the plan is now a suite of related documents. Hart have issued their Statement of Community Involvement (SCI). Public consultation on the Core Strategy and Development Control Policies: Draft Issues and Options Document finished on 24 Feb 2006. The next headline event will be the issue of the draft document containing Site Specific Allocations for new housing. Housing numbers will of course have to comply with housing allocations in the South East Plan. If all this sounds much the same as before dressed up with new longer names, and a plethora of unknown acronyms, then read on.

Community Plans

The biggest of all changes in this new planning system is the introduction of planning at community and neighbourhood level. Bottom-up planning Confusingly these new plans can take various guises, depending on the size of community, whether that community is urban or rural, and whether the plan is concerned with community issues, design issues, economic development issues, or all three. In Yateley we have chosen to emcompass all these under the one name Yateley Parish Plan since Yateley is a Civil Parish. So don't get hung up if you read that Parish Plans only apply to communities of up to 3,000 inhabitants. Yateley is producing its Parish Plan using the Market Town Health Check methodology. This process, suited to Yateley's character and size, is governed by the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), another part of regional government.

There are only four things to remember about community plans:

• YOU are preparing your community plan,
• the community needs a 'vision'
• community plans cover absolutely everything provided by public services and government
• and it's the 'outcomes' which matter.

Land-use planning at the parish level

With all this new emphasis on the community's vision and its aspirations for health, policing etc what has happened to land-use planning at the parish level? Obviously parishes are not expected to make their own allocations for housing development. But communities can now influence locations and design of new housing, shops and amenities. This can be done by such things as character appraisals, heritage statements, and plain old questionnaires. The spacial planning process for a small community could be called the Village Design Framework, or it could be called producing a Town Design Statement. Yateley is working on both of these for different parts of the town.

You can find on the SideBar links to all these different facets of producing the Yateley Parish Plan. But remember that the new requirement is that community plans are produced by the community for the community. So when it is written, if you don't like it, you have only yourself to blame for not taking part in writing it in the first place. Our email address is on the SideBar