A year and more consultation before we get a town centre masterplan
Friday, 20th June 2014.
It is likely to be June next year before any masterplan for Haverhill town centre becomes a reality, councillors heard yesterday.
Haverhill Area Working Party of St Edmundsbury Borough Council heard the masterplan process outlined by principal planning officer Ian Poole.
ONE Haverhill were identifying the issues and then there would be a public consultation about them. The feedback from that would help plannersdraw up a draft masterplan, which would then again be put out to consultation.
Using the responses to that planners would then amend the document to make it ready to be agreed by the borough's cabinet and adpoted by full council, probably in June.
Borough chief executive Ian Gallin told members the consultation would not this time be carried out by the council's planning department, but by its department for communities.
Cllr Maureen Byrne urged that the consultations should be across all sorts of platforms and not just on line as had happened before and produced small, skewed results.
Cllr Anne Gower said: "Haverhill seems to be the consultation capital of the world. You must have shedloads of information about what people think. Do you use any of it? I'm afraid it gets to a point where people get turned off by consultations."
Mr Gallin said it needed to be a robust prtocess so the final document could be tested at appeal, but he assured her they would draw on the results of existing consultations.
Cllr Gower said it was essential that Suffolk County Council agreed to the final masterplan, as they were the highway authority and would have to implement part of it.
Mr Gallin said they would be a consultee, but Cllr Gower said it needed more than that and they should get a definite commitment from the county council to the plan.
Cllr Byrne said every effort should be made to get a large percentage of Haverhill's population of nearly 28,000 to respond to the consultation.
Haverhill Area Working Party of St Edmundsbury Borough Council heard the masterplan process outlined by principal planning officer Ian Poole.
ONE Haverhill were identifying the issues and then there would be a public consultation about them. The feedback from that would help plannersdraw up a draft masterplan, which would then again be put out to consultation.
Using the responses to that planners would then amend the document to make it ready to be agreed by the borough's cabinet and adpoted by full council, probably in June.
Borough chief executive Ian Gallin told members the consultation would not this time be carried out by the council's planning department, but by its department for communities.
Cllr Maureen Byrne urged that the consultations should be across all sorts of platforms and not just on line as had happened before and produced small, skewed results.
Cllr Anne Gower said: "Haverhill seems to be the consultation capital of the world. You must have shedloads of information about what people think. Do you use any of it? I'm afraid it gets to a point where people get turned off by consultations."
Mr Gallin said it needed to be a robust prtocess so the final document could be tested at appeal, but he assured her they would draw on the results of existing consultations.
Cllr Gower said it was essential that Suffolk County Council agreed to the final masterplan, as they were the highway authority and would have to implement part of it.
Mr Gallin said they would be a consultee, but Cllr Gower said it needed more than that and they should get a definite commitment from the county council to the plan.
Cllr Byrne said every effort should be made to get a large percentage of Haverhill's population of nearly 28,000 to respond to the consultation.
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