Neighbourhood Plan Survey – Protect what matters. Improve on what is missing or unsatisfactory. Shape Gnosall’s future together.

Sadly, our initial plans for data collation and analysis fell through and so it has taken a lot more time than we expected to gather all the data. Thank you for bearing with us!

Recent major changes in the timetable of Local Plan preparation will affect us. The Plan Period is now 2025-2045 and the new Local Plan will not be adopted until April 2029. Our Neighbourhood Plan must develop in parallel, so we have to rejig our schedule – again! Initially, we must concentrate on defining the vision for Gnosall in 2045.

Parish Councils now get a bigger input into Local Plan creation and there are several points at which we will be asked to feed in our thoughts – your survey responses have given us a sound basis to do just that.

We know we need to do more work to find out what our young people think. Next year we hope to begin an engagement programme to capture more detail about their vision for 2045.

We are also mindful of the fact that there are many aspects of Planning Policy that the general public/parish councils are not able to influence – housing numbers for instance. But what we can influence, we will.

Look out for bulletins from us to show how we are progressing and how we are using the information you gave us. We can already see that your responses align closely with the Themes of the proposed Local Plan.

For example, you have been very clear about how development should be designed and what should be taken into account, which sits well with Design, Healthy Lifestyles and Safe Communities (Theme 2).

Your strong feelings that the protection of wildlife and biodiversity are important fit well with Nature Recovery & Biodiversity (Theme 3).

Protecting Landscapes, Townscapes and Heritage (Theme 4) was very important to you and you felt strongly that development should preserve local character by balancing growth with conservation.

It is very clear that you have a strong sense of local pride in our community. You want to preserve what makes us special while making thoughtful improvements for future generations.

We are committed to making sure that your views enable us to develop a robust Neighbourhood Plan, which will feed into the preparation of the Local Plan.