NP Meeting Open Forum

Published: 26 February 2018

Location: Holy Trinity Church, Lower Beeding | Timing: 13th February 2018 at 19:35 hrs

Present

NP Leader: Geoff Peckham (GP)
NP Co-Lead: Leslie Bamford (LB)
Dale Mayhew (DM) of Dowsett and Mayhew
NP Working Party Members (NPWP)

Lower Beeding Parish Residents – all signed an attendance sheet

Meeting Agenda

Welcome and Introductions.
Housing Needs:-
Horsham DC response to the government’s consultation on calculating housing needs.
Housing Needs consideration report update.
Agreeing the Lower Beeding Parish (LBP) housing needs
Discussion of preferred sites.
Exhibition of preferred sites.
Next meetings for NP Working Party / Policies and Green Spaces.
AOB, questions and discussion.

Minutes

1.0 GP & LB opened the meeting by giving an overview of where we are with the compilation of the NP. Specifically relating to the meeting agenda.

1.1 DM gave some in-depth information on the expectations of Horsham District Council’s (HDC) in respect to the LBNP housing requirements. DM reported that the government will within the next month revise the HDC contribution to the housing stock. This may impact the LBNP housing developments. He further added the HDC provision requirement thus far. He said that until we know what the expectations are from HDC then we may have to revise the LBNP. It may also depend on what HDC methodology is utilised to calculate the future housing needs.

1.2 DM passed on some statistics regarding the LB Parish:-

The total population had increased in LB from the 2001 to the 2011 census’ from 1001 to 1022 with total households growing from 384 to 401, with an associated decrease in average people per dwelling from 2.6 to 2.54.
It is forecasted that there will be a decrease in people per dwelling up to 2031 by 7%.
LB is classed as a smaller settlement in the HDC plan.

1.3 DM then outlined how HDC class the Built-Up Area Boundary (BUAB)

New housing development in a NP should be adjoining a settlement edge.
Settlement edge is not necessarily the BUAB.
The LBNP must stay within the HDC plan.
New developments must be within 800 metres of BUAB.
He acknowledged that Crabtree is an unclassified settlement and a maximum of 6 houses could be built.

1.4 DM finished by saying that we should not proceed until we received any revised number of houses in relation to the HDC plan.

2.0 LB then outlined the 9 preferred sites that were selected from the original 23 prosed sites.

2.1 LB asked DM what would be the density of housing required from the HDC plan.

High Density would be 35+ dwellings per hectare.
Medium Density is 25 – 35 dwellings per hectare.
Low Density would be 25< dwellings per hectare.

DM said at the present time a density of housing had not been decided for LB.

3.0 LB reported that there will be a further exhibition to show the final preferred sites and their selection criteria.

3.1 The target timing of the next exhibition was in April / May 2018.

3.2 The LBWP will be fine tuning their Policies / Green Spaces plan in the near future and all of the community were invited to join the LBWP to assist in these processes.

There were no further questions from the floor.
The meeting closed at 21:53 hrs