Minutes of the Special Meeting of Maresfield Parish Council held on

 Wednesday 29^th September 2004 in Nutley Memorial Hall

Present:  Cllr W King, Cllr P Tester, Cllr J Gutteridge, Cllr K Ogden,

Cllr R Street, Cllr R Tester, Cllr H Fry, Cllr C Stephens, Cllr Ms M Thomas,

Cllr S Leaney, Cllr R Woodgate, Cllr Mrs S Weekes. CCllr A Reid. Clerk: Tony Allen.

1.            Apologies for absence - Cllr T Sparrow (other business), Cllr G Hardy (urgent family business), DCllr J Hollins.

2.            Declarations of interest – None.

3.         To determine the control and allocation of work for Council’s input to the Local Development Framework.

Cllr Ogden gave the following update from the WDC meeting held on 29^th September 2004:-

• WDC voted for the 2^nd Draft Deposit of the Local Plan to be printed so that they can proceed to consultation
• Some villages in the Plan (including Maresfield) will be omitted from the printing and subjected to further review
• The current Adopted Local Plan is coming to the end of its useful life
• Major plans for development in Maresfield were being mooted by District Councillors

The following points were noted in discussion:-

• WDC have to produce a Statement of Community Involvement, and the way in which the Parish Council  input dovetails with this and the timing of the exercise remains to be seen once WDC have produced that Statement.
• All Councillors will need to be involved in the LDF work, which is substantial, and a lot of the work will need to be done outside of meetings. We need to decide how to co-ordinate this, and obvious candidates were Planning and policy Committees.
• Cllr P Tester proposed the work be done within Council. On the basis that this was agreed by all present, but noting that a degree of co-ordination will be required, the Chairman agreed to co-ordinate Council work on the LDF requirements and the development of the Parish Council’s timetable for input; this was approved.
• WDC may have a challenging timetable imposed by the Government, thus the Parish Council will only have a short timescale for inputs, and should therefore tell WDC what the Parish communities want
• WDC are thought  to be planning the development of their LDF by adopting en bloc the less controversial sections of the 2^nd Draft Deposit of the Local Plan, to enable them to give more time to issues such as housing

The following was agreed:-

• The control and allocation of work for Council’s input to the Local Development Framework will be handled by full Council, at special meetings arranged as required, to be kept out of normal Council meetings.
• A work proposal/ LDF development timetable to be put to full Council at its meeting on 19^th October 2004. ACTION: Chairman and Cllr Ms M Thomas to draft and circulate in advance. It was agreed that, in view of the tight timescales, work on LDF input could start immediately, albeit informally, and overseen by the Chairman.

There being no further business, the meeting closed at 19:55.