The Wivenhoe Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, whose website this is, is happy to promote the NP as it is not under the same legal restraints as Wivenhoe Town Council is during the referendum period (i.e. from Friday 22 March until the vote on 2 May).
Publicity promoting the NP and encouraging a positive Referendum vote will shortly be seen in the press and in the town.
The Plan review group tweaked the NP after the examiner’s comments came through on 13 March, although it is stressed that no material changes have been necessary.
Even so, this has meant many, many hours of fiddly and time consuming work: on the draft NP text, re-numbering of sections, improving maps, formatting, re-checking all the reference numbers, proof reading etc.
This work is just about finished now, and the Referendum version of the NP should soon be available locally. We will post again to say where, but the Wivenhoe Town Council offices are certain to be one of the places.
A propos the Referendum question, someone asked “What documents or principles will CBC use ‘to help it decide…’ if the majority of Wivenhoe voters vote No in the referendum?”
The answer is: Colchester would use its own Development Plan, as a ‘no’ vote will have the same effect as if the NP had never existed.
We certainly hope the vote will be ‘yes!’, so developers will have to have regard to the special provisions that we as a town together thought would be desirable when planning applications for Wivenhoe are considered by Colchester BC.