John Strange on the Power of Resident Participation in Neighbourhood Planning

Ever wondered how your neighbourhood took shape? How decisions about housing, infrastructure, and amenities were made? Join us on a fascinating journey with John Strange, Vice Chairman of the Finchingfield Parish Council, as we unlock the secrets of neighbourhood planning! We lift the lid on the detailed process that shapes our local communities, from selecting the type of plan - neighbourhood or parish - to deciding on housing provisions, infrastructure, education, and businesses. Gain insights into why Finchingfield and Wethersfield opted for a joint plan and how it reflects their vision and needs.

Now, peel back another layer and step into the heart of community engagement. Picture this: it's October, you're at a 'drop-in session' and neighbours are passionately sharing their loves, loathes, and hopes for their area. Feel their fierce determination to preserve green spaces, what to do with the airfield and heritage, their commitment to maintaining local services like health centres. Your voice is just as important, and we're here to help you make it heard. So, complete those surveys we've distributed on housing and resident preferences and help protect local assets. Remember, it's not just about you, it's about your neighbourhood, your community, your future - let's shape it together!

Chapters

• 0:06 Exploring the Neighborhood Plan Process
• 17:39 Neighborhood Planning and Community Engagement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Field Association on Air. We are a group of residents who are passionate about tackling all aspects of local and national government decisions that affect local communities. In each episode, various members of the Field Association will be exploring a range of subject matters, discussing all the angles of each issue and interviewing those who can add an expert or helpful point of view. So grab yourself a tea or coffee and listening as we look to navigate through these current challenges.

Speaker 2: 0:39

Hello everyone. My name is Michelle Chapman from the Field Association and I'm here with John Strange. John, do you want to introduce yourself?

Speaker 3: 0:47

Yes, michelle, thank you very much. I'm John Strange, or Johnny Strange, and I'm currently the Vice Chairman of Finchingfield Parish Council, to be Chairman as of tomorrow, and I'm also Chairman of the National Planning team for Finchingfield and Weathersfield. I've been asked to do this podcast to try and explain to people what is actually happening and any questions that Michelle has so far at me.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Brilliant thanks, so it's really good to have you. So, in terms of locally, we've been seeing lots of messages on Facebook and posts around the neighbourhood plan, so could you tell us what actually is a neighbourhood plan?

Speaker 3: 1:27

Well, the neighbourhood plan is a scheme really that the local governments have come up with for villages and parishes to put together their vision of how they wish their areas to look like and be like for the next 10 to 15 years. So it's a plan which is based around in this case, braintree District Council's local planning and will follow their local planning. But it gives the people in each of the villages in this case it's Weathersfield, finchingfield, blackmore End and Cornishall End, with a number of villages that's tagged on to our area. It also includes a massive area of the air base and also includes the air base in whatever plans we feel or the residents feel should be used for. So that's the basics of the neighbourhood plan and it's a legal document. So it is so important that everybody has a view either for or against or whatever. This is the fact that people got to have a view for the future.

Speaker 2: 2:40

So what kind of things does a neighbourhood plan cover? What sort of things would our neighbourhood plan cover?

Speaker 3: 2:46

Well, it covers absolutely everything. It doesn't just cover the type of plans for housebuilding and everything. It goes into the type of structures, how eco-friendly they are climate change being a main contributor to that but also what's the area provides for education, health, roads, absolutely everything, businesses. So many people work from home nowadays and in our recent survey we discovered that over 50% of the population of the areas most people self-employed work outside of the centres of Finchingfield and Weathersfield, so they're in villages and hamlets which are outside. So their views are very different from the people actually in the villages from the aspect of wanting any development or not wanting development. Obviously, the pubs and businesses in Finchingfield would like to see more development on a controlled basis, whilst a lot of other people really don't want change at all. So it's getting a happy medium between what everybody's views are and also to get a say in the different groups which build the area for business and employment, such as the pubs, the farmers, the garages, the health centre and the school. So it is actually encompassing virtually everything.

Speaker 2: 4:27

And across a number of different areas as well? Presumably so. This is a neighbourhood plan between Finchingfield and Weathersfield, so why have a joint neighbourhood plan?

Speaker 3: 4:35

Well, it's a vision that actually was brought up by the residents, or the Paris Council of Weathersfield and they were actually on their way to be doing a neighbourhood plan when they decided that in actual fact they wanted a larger area which encompassed really the three fields Toppersfield, weathersfield and Finchingfield. In actual fact, toppersfield were already three-quarters of the way down their neighbourhood plan. So they came to us, finchingfield, and said would you like to join us in a joint neighbourhood plan? And that's where it started really, because a lot of the groundwork had been done by Weathersfield before Roger Duffin and I joined the neighbourhood plan to represent basically Finchingfield. So it made a lot of sense that well, finchingfield joined it. So we're proceeding as we are and we're a long way ahead already. Certainly everybody's seen the drop-ins and everybody's had the surveys for resident surveys and the house housing survey.

Speaker 2: 5:47

You talk about we, and it sounds like quite an involved process. So who's actually doing the work? Is there a group of people? Is there a community of people involved?

Speaker 3: 5:55

Yes, oh, yes. Yeah, there's a nucleus of a team with people floating in and out. Helping especially with the main work is the documents provided. We need to provide for the plan to do with the history, the layout of the area, the economics of the area, the businesses, the health centre, the education. All these areas were broken down into one or two people having to make an essay or a document which is factual, evidence-based document, which provides the information and the background to the plan. Because once we've established exactly where we are on each subject, we can then make policies. But we can't make policies without the surveys, without the drop-ins and those sort of things. Once we have those together we can actually start to make policies, because that's what people want, what they've required in the questionnaire, and once those policies are made, actions can be also put in the plan to improve things that we see necessary to our area.

Speaker 2: 7:12

Yeah, it does, it does. It just sounds like an awful lot of work. So why don't we just do a parish or a village plan? So wouldn't that be easier? And why have you decided not to go down that route?

Speaker 3: 7:22

Well, a village plan or a parish plan isn't a legal document. It's basically just a plan that nobody really takes much notice of Because all it does is stay in the parish. The neighbourhood plan, once it's gone through the process, which is a very lengthy process, won't be really completed until halfway through 2024, when the final drafts are being approved and also it's being sent out to the people in the residence to vote on. It gets sent to Braintree District Council and it is gone through by their lawyers and solicitors to make sure that if factual, it's legal. They may have issues with it where we may have to change bits and bobs of it. But basically, once they have gone through it and they find it fits the legal requirements, it is physically lodged as an ongoing neighbourhood plan which will last we are aiming for initially 10 years with an extension for another five years.

Speaker 3: 8:27

Wow, so that's the idea and obviously just a plan drawn up by the parish council, is not a legal document. It won't hold any water at the end of the day no, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Who pays for this? Is this an expensive process? Who pays?

Speaker 3: 8:45

Well, we've managed to get grants for it and the grant is £18,000 over two-year periods. We put in £10,000 to pay for a consultant. It's mainly for the consultant who will be putting the whole plan together, with our obviously giving us all the advice and consultancy on it to get to the point where we feel it's a viable document to put to the residence. We're near that stage but without a consultant the plan, I don't think would hold as much weight. The consultant has the experience and he's done quite a number of local plans to our area before and successfully.

Speaker 2: 9:31

That sounds great. I mean, up until very recently, I'd never heard of a neighborhood plan, so is this something that a lot of other areas do Do? Other people do this.

Speaker 3: 9:40

Yeah, I understand it's becoming a pretty popular thing. Certainly for our area I think it's become quite a big thing because there's been a lot of development. There's certainly down towards Dunmer and that area where I don't think the neighborhood plan, if they had one has worked particularly well because obviously the development is just being rampant. But it seems like a lot of the development there has been over a long period of time and most of that might've been done before the neighborhood plan was in place. Otherwise the parish council would add more control on what was going on. They may not be unhappy about what has been developed there but from our view, for our area, I got a feeling people would be more concerned about 2000 houses being put between Weathersfield and Bartfield and Finchingfield and then having no gaps between the green spaces, which is always a danger, having ribbon development. It's measured development we are interested in and controlled development.

Speaker 2: 10:51

What other things are you? Because obviously housing and that kind of overdevelopment is, as you say, a huge concern for people living locally. What other things would you expect to go into the neighborhood plan? Are the things that we want or don't want? What else is going into it?

Speaker 3: 11:04

Well with any developments it puts more strain on different parts of the areas. The area for health education, finchingfield Primary School only has, I think, about 48 kids in at the moment. They've lost kids because of the people who employed at the air base that had been made redundant and moved on. They lost a teacher as well. So we have 50 houses, 55 houses that have been put up on the Bartfield Road and some people were against that. On the other hand, it does actually provide more younger people in the village. More youth, more children, hopefully, will be going to the school. It will bring more economy to the village. So we look on the upside of it that it's not a bad thing if it can be controlled. Now, if we had better control of those houses that were built by the Hills Group, we could have actually said what we'd like them to be more aesthetically built, more in to the same design, as most of the houses in Essex are timber framed houses. In itself, having a timber framed house is pretty ecological in my view, and with modern heating and modern double glazing triple glazing they can be kept just as warm as a brick house. So we could have actually made a lot of changes to the way those houses were built, including solar, for instance, and we have more say on the neighborhood plan being in place than not having one. And it goes to.

Speaker 3: 12:48

If you're putting in 2000 houses in an area with all that tarmac, all the washaway water coming off a new housing estate, it's got to go somewhere. And it's not surprising we have more floods occurring with climate change because more runaway water, and that's an issue which we would have in the neighborhood plan because we realize that we live in an area which floods. So putting in more houses means more flooding, and that's why it's so important to have a view and have a say in a neighborhood plan. We're not saying no to anything. We're more positive about it and having control on our futures, our children's futures.

Speaker 3: 13:38

I mean, I'm 61. I hope my children be moving probably back to this area. I'm not around forever, but they've got their future and they're my grandchildren. So I'm looking really ahead and so should everybody else look ahead, not backwards or be negative about it, because this is such an important issue in our time and there will be no other opportunity to have a say like this until general elections, obviously next year or whatever. But this is a local issue and it should be taken seriously and people should get involved.

Speaker 2: 14:20

Yeah, it sounds very much like. It sounds to me as though this is a way of the local community having more of a say, being more in control of the things that are happening. What would your response be? Because, obviously, when we talk about things like voting and having your say, there's often a lot of feedback from people who say, well, what's the point? Nobody ever listens. What would your response be to people who have that view?

Speaker 3: 14:45

Well, those are the naysayers I said to you earlier. I mean the negative people who haven't got anything positive to say. Really, I think it's a great shame, you know, it's there not lost, not my loss. When things go, pear shake, don't come crying to us saying, oh Well, you know, is 200 houses being built there, blah, blah, blah, when they didn't even contribute to anything in the first place. So those people who don't want to get involved fair enough, they're probably not listening to this because they're not in Don't want to get involved. So it's the is the positive people that we're attracting here, not negative people, because you always get negative, negative people in society and it's a great shame, but you just gonna live with it. You know, and that's just one of those things. You know, we, as long as we carry most of the people with us, that's fine. Those people who don't want to be involved, or Negative or have their own views, that's fine. But don't rub it off on everybody else, because, no, you know, it's just pointless.

Speaker 2: 15:50

Oh, absolutely, oh, it really does provide a really fantastic opportunity to have a say, to have an opinion, to have an input into the things that go on locally.

Speaker 3: 15:59

Yes, precisely. Yeah, it is such a local thing. You know you'll have an opportunity like it again. It's, it's. This will be in place for 10 to 15 years and it does make a difference, because we have to make a difference in In the areas we live in. If you want to keep it rural and want to keep it the way it is, that's fine, but there certainly changes will be. A foot climate will change, everything will change. It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing, and To have control, more control with it, is probably the better way than having no control at all.

Speaker 2: 16:37

Absolutely you. You mentioned earlier about the airbase and it's really clear that the neighborhood plan is about so much more than the airbase. But how does that fit into this?

Speaker 3: 16:47

Well, there's such a large area of the airbase which Can be. I'm just looking at the pamphlet now which went out ages and ages ago, initial land use study plan of the airbase, done by your group, I think and it is such good reading because it spells out everything that we could envisage the area being used for housing, community centers, it's, it's all here economy, skills, the. But the airbase is such a vast area it's got to be used for our rural area. There's no other reason for having the airbase used for anything else really it is a vast area, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 17:31

And it provides such an opportunity for for something, for something productive.

Speaker 3: 17:36

It's huge.

Speaker 2: 17:38

It is. So you had some dropping sessions in October and I came along to those and I saw that you had a lot of information for people to find out about the neighborhood plans. So did you find anything out from those dropping sessions? What of what value did they add in terms of the process and understanding more about what people wanted locally?

Speaker 3: 18:00

Yeah, I mean they're fairly well attended, I have to say, and we did, we had to weather's field, had to it Finchingfield, in the Guild Hall, one up Blackmore and one at Cornish will and and it was well attended and but the age, the average age, was Relatively higher, I have to say. But you'd expect that because people got more time on the hands when they're 65 plus. But we had a good Number of all ages really, I mean right down to 18 to 35, some under 18, so it was a fairly mixed group and People had were able to go around, understand what an April plan is for starters, and then they could put down on sticky Things to put on a board, but what they're actually feelings are for the area and what their dislikes and likes were basically, and from that we've managed to do a little Survey of those, of those particular things. And you know it was very interesting what people come up with. You know the air base wasn't wasn't exactly mentioned that much, fun enough. The bridge in Finchingfield was mentioned a fair amount obviously. Hgv's, you know, mentioned quite a lot and some. But yeah, in general it's given us a fairly good Idea what people like most of the area, certainly the green spaces, the fresh air, the clean air, all those sort of things for the heritage of the area, environment, those are the things which are kept on coming up more often than not. A lot of people, obviously, ride horses, so you know the green spaces and the bridal paths and people have a lot usually, you know, since lockdown. A lot of people have dogs, so dog walking, very, very busy Cycling, but obviously very big on the agenda.

Speaker 3: 19:53

Yes, that's, that was lots of things came out of it all towards physical health and mental health and well-being of of the residents of the area, which is again part of the neighborhood plan. You know what we strive to. You know envisage everybody's views of our area and when you talk about health and vitality and this sort of thing, it goes back to the health center as well, which has over 7,500 people registered with them. This is incredible for the size of the health center and this doesn't just stretch our area, it stretches all the way up to sailing, great sailing and beyond. So they have an enormous catchment area.

Speaker 3: 20:39

So any additional houses and whatever additional people living in the area would increase their needs and requirements. So we have certain groups which we're meeting with. We've already met with the guild to get their views. We've met with the schools, arranging to meet with the schools to get there their ideas and how they see things moving ahead for the future. If they increased in their children at the school and patients to the clinic. So all these things are important and when you have a healthy society they're not so ill so they don't need to go to the health center so much. But you know, that's all part and parcel of our rural environment. I hope that people want to enjoy and that's the reason why I moved out of London 31 years ago was to give the children a different life, a better life outside of London. And we have, and none of them are living here at the moment, but I'm pretty certain they're all gonna be moving back soon.

Speaker 2: 21:44

I think that's a riddle. A lot of people come to the area. Actually, I think that what you've just described and what's really important, one of the things that I took away from those drop-in sessions was not just about stopping things that we don't want to happen in this area, but it's also preserving the things that we value and perhaps even take for granted. I remember walking back and hadn't written it on the board but looked around and just saw how clean it was and thought I didn't write that down, but that's because it's become. This is just what I come to expect of this area. So I guess the things that it's important to hold on to, the things that we value, that perhaps we might take for granted.

Speaker 3: 22:21

Well, yeah, we call them assets. Assets are anything from the grade one or two listed buildings in the whole area. Blackmore End has more than you'd imagine listed, and certainly Finchfield has enormous history, as does Weatherfield, and it is important for people to understand that. And it's an asset, as are the buildings, as are the pubs, as are the memorials, things that these things are for the future. So, yeah, managing what we have and making it something that everybody sees and loves is important just as much as a clean street or a nicely painted house. So, yes, those things help you well being, don't they?

Speaker 2: 23:07

So in terms of the process, then we're at the point now where you have distributed the surveys. What the date for surveys to be back is the eighth, is that correct?

Speaker 3: 23:17

Yes, the eighth of December is D-Day and it'd be really good if people could, if they haven't done it at the moment and I've been on to my farmer across the road already this morning he's busy these farms, you see. So actually trying to get them to sit down for 10 minutes with a cup of tea to do the survey online is a task, but it's just 10 minutes with a cup of tea or something stronger if you fancy it. But it's important to do that survey on surveymonkeycouk and the housing survey as well, which goes with it. So there's one bit of paper which everybody will receive, which is a white bit of paper, which is the housing survey with a questionnaire on it, and the other one was the yellow one, which is the residence survey, and that is. So one survey is for the house, basically. So the housing survey that you do once, and the residence survey is anybody actually living in the house.

Speaker 2: 24:13

So, husband wife, uncle aunt, so each individual person.

Speaker 3: 24:17

Yes, yeah, right down to 18 year olds. We have a kids survey of 10 questions. Only. That's on the website and it may be fun for the kids. It may be boring, but it'd be good if they could do it.

Speaker 2: 24:32

So I think that's the message, isn't it? It's like we appreciate people are busy, they don't have a lot of time, but if you can just take 10 minutes out to complete these surveys, then you can have a say, you can have your input into what goes on locally.

Speaker 3: 24:44

Precisely, yeah, precisely. We're part way through this process. We are doing it quicker than any other neighborhood plan. Most take more than five years. We hope to actually have ours certainly signed off by spring 2025. And there will be obviously a point where everybody will see the finished product before it goes to Braintree and vote on it. That in itself is important. So people may be coming around knocking on your door again to say what do you think? Do you have an opinion on the whole plan or don't you? Or is it just okay, or is it good? Hopefully everybody says it's good because it's gonna take a lot of time and a lot of work, and I couldn't. You know I admire all the people working on it. From my team, I put in so much effort, which is side bottom, especially in John Pierce. The amount of effort gone in to putting this together is phenomenal and I have to thank that team from bottom of my heart. It's been quite an honor and task and I think it's a great thing to be done for this area, for our area.

Speaker 2: 26:02

That's brilliant. Thank you so much, john. Thanks for joining us, and you know it sounds like a huge process that you're condensing into, you know, as quicker timeframe as possible and I really hope that people get involved and have their say. If you can, please complete the surveys. You can either complete them as the paper copies that have come through your door, or most people find it a lot easier just to go straight to the website, which is wwwfw-nporg, and you'll find the access to the online surveys, which many people find very easy to complete just 10 minutes and then you can have a say on what goes on locally.

Speaker 1: 26:43

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