Statement of Community Involvement Draft March 2023

Hertfordshire Gardens Trust comment on Appendix 1.
'specific consultation bodies'. English Heritage no longer acts as consultee. The relevant body is Historic England .
The Gardens Trust is statutory consultee for all Registered Parks and Gardens , and should be added to this list.

Thank you for consulting the Minerals and Waste Planning Authority on the revised draft SCI. We have no comments to make.

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I wish to submit the following comments for your consideration:
1. A broken link in para. 2.6: The link for the Council's Notification Register does not appear to open a page into which a member of the public, a group or a business can enter their contact details and their preferences for being notified by the Council of planning applications and consultations.

2. Community groups: The draft text mentions various kinds of groups including those with protected characteristics (para. 2.4), community groups and organisations that are local (presumably to the site to which an application refers; please clarify para. 2.2 in that regard) and specific community groups (para. 3.2). In the context of land use planning, this could be understood to refer solely to communities of place, to the exclusion of communities of interest in particular topics (such as ecological sustainability, biodiversity and mitigation of climate change). Such a reading can disadvantage the latter, which for lack of notification may fail to engage with a planning process in its earliest stages when fundamental issues might need to be addressed. Rather than burden the officers with further notification, such groups could be invited to express their scope of interests via the Notification Register mentioned in point 1. above.

3. Document formatting: The text of each draft document that is subject to or otherwise referenced in any public consultation should be both searchable and copiable; including documents from other parties such as applicants and consultants. (para. 4.3) For instance, the contents of the present 'Statement of Community Involvement - Draft March 2023' are searchable yet not (so it seems) copiable for the purpose of citing extracts.

4. Submitting comments: In para. 3.1, the proviso that comments will not be considered unless they are "... copied to the Strategic Planning team within the consultation period ..." seems unreasonable, since this officer team is not widely known outside of the Council. Rather, a set of comments should be considered if they are duly received by the Council within the prescribed period. Even if they arrived on the following working day, no officer time would have been lost in accepting delivery; similarly if an emailed response were to turn up in the Council's incoming 'Spam' folder.
Oddly in the present consultation, even after logging in as advised here, the destination page does not seem to provide a form for submitting comments! 🧐

Thank you for your consultation for the Statement of Community Involvement. We are please to see that we have been listed as a statutory consultee and we welcome further engagement with yourselves in the future.

We believe this is the ideal opportunity to raise awareness of our charged pre-application advice service. This is a bespoke advice service where a project manager is assigned as a single point of contact at the Environmental Agency, and who would provide project specific advice which can help reduce uncertainty and delays to your application once it reaches the submission stage. More information can be found on our website here.

We also offer a charged advice service for Local Plan evidence based documents, such as the preparation of a Strategic Flood Risk Assessment. Please note, we do not charge for advice given at the statutory consultation stage.

I note that water undertakers and sewerage undertakers are listed in Appendix 1 as a statutory consultee. I can confirm that I am the single point of contact for Anglian Water on Local Plans and also National Infrastructure projects in the Hertfordshire area which Anglian Water serves.

In addition to water recycling assets serving the northern half of the district - including Hitchin and Baldock - I can advise that we are now actively engaging with our 59 local planning authorities and the Environment Agency on the carbon and climate change impacts of the spatial distribution of growth. In line with the NPPF local plan guidance that approach looks to apply the sustainability hierarchy and so minimise the need for new infrastructure including the attendant carbon of constructing new water & wastewater capacity.

I look forward to working with you on the new Local Plan.

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Thank you for your email dated 11th May 2023 requesting comments in respect of the subject consultation.

Whilst I appreciate that there is a requirement to consult. Based on the track record of the 12 years I have served as a District Councillor. I have reached the conclusion presumably also shared by most members and officers that public consultations tick the box but achieve nothing other than there has been a public consultation.

The Local Plan consultations/comments is a good example. In spite of thousands of public comments, no selected site was removed from the ELP or any reasonable modification adopted.

For example the ONS reduced required housing numbers, yet all the original selected sites remained. Key council officers wanted a particular site removed, yet the Inspector (who may also have wished to do this). I imagine had been instructed that he could not and did not.

The whole process took years, cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and as far as I can see did not change at all.

Environmentally, officers and members talk the talk, yet 80% of the Local Plan selected sites are on greenbelt.

Officers have also been aware for years that the sewage treatment plants in four of the villages that I represent do not have the capacity to deal with the existing housing load. Yet houses continue to be approved and built, when planning approval could be conditional on the STP being upgraded prior to building work commencing.

In the meantime our so-called pristine chalk streams continue to be polluted.

I have spent months putting together logical arguments for and against aspects of the Local Plan. Nothing is ever accepted or changed.

A waste of my time and whoever happens to be reading this email.

Thank you for your letter regarding your consultation on a revised Statement of Community Involvement which was forwarded to our Area team by National office.

If possible, we would like to be updated on any new policies, local plans or planning applications which are within 500m of an Ancient Woodland or are likely to affect any other woodland please.

As a Non-Ministerial Government Department, the Forestry Commission provide no opinion supporting or objecting to applications. Rather we provide advice on the potential impact that any proposed development or plan could have on trees and woodland including ancient woodland.

Our Area Team mailbox for consultations is: eandem@forestrycommission.gov.uk

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Thank you for consulting Transport for London. I can confirm that we have no comments to make on the revised Statement of Community Involvement

Libraries

Table 6 (P25) - This needs to read as follows: “Copies of planning applications available at libraries during their normal opening hours and the Council offices….” Otherwise it reads as though it is appointment only at both places