The Lymington Society and Neighbourhood Plans
The Lymington Society has been urging the Town Council to produce a Lymington Neighbourhood Plan since the early days of the announcement of the introduction of neighbourhood plans. Initially, the Town Council was sceptical of the benefits of neighbourhood plans and the Society lobbied for many years trying to persuade the Council that they were worth undertaking.
We do understand that although the Town Council commenced the Lymington and Pennington Neighbourhood Plan (NP) in about 2016, it has had considerable problems completing the NP, due to the pandemic and staffing issues and we wish our initiatives with these information pages and our recently announced Community Engagement Survey to be seen as supportive and complimentary to their plans.
> The Neighbourhood Plan Explained
Society Involvement in the Neighbourhood Plan
As set out above, the Town Council eventually decided to start a Neighbourhood Plan in around 2016 the Lymington Society was represented on one of the working parties tasked with examining heritage and design for future developments. Due to delays and Covid-17, this working party has not met since 2017 and the report produced by this working party is still not available on any Council website. The same applies to the other working party groups which met in 2017, whose reports have not been made public.
In 2021 the Society wrote to the Town Council again, urging them to take note of the many letters to the local press asking for changes to Lymington High Street, in order to try and create a more continental café culture. We pressed the Council to widen the scope of the Neighbourhood Plan to ensure that the community gets the greatest benefits possible from this exercise.
What’s the current situation in Lymington and Pennington?
The Society is aware that the Council is now making an attempt to complete the Neighbourhood Plan process and that a working group of councillors is taking forward planning for a draft Neighbourhood Plan, to be issued for consultation in the next month or two.
As above, the Society was involved in early workshops in 2017 in respect of the Heritage and Design elements of any future housing developments that were brought forward, and more recently we have been involved in two meetings designed to bring forward a vision for the town centre which was produced by consultants for the Town Council.
More recently the Town Council has brought in external consultants to help them get the Neighbourhood Plan process back on track and has now put two documents (“A Vision for the Town Centre” and “A Design Guide for Future Developments”) on their neighbourhood planning website.
Click this link to view the Neighbourhood Plan Documents.
The view of the Society is that, despite these documents having some good ideas in them, they are based on what outside consultants feel the town needs, rather than on properly conducted “community involvement” to ascertain the changes and improvements that local people might want to bring forward for their community.
However, we do wish to be positive and supportive of the attempts by the Town Council to complete the Neighbourhood Plan and wish to work with them to get the plans finished and approved.
As the recognised Amenity Society in the town, we do feel a responsibility to represent not just our members, but the views of the wider community, and it is in that spirit that we have set up our Community Engagement Survey which we hope can be seen as complimentary and helpful to the future consultations that the Town Council will be organising.
> Ideas for inclusion in Lymington and Pennington’s Neighbourhood Plan
Have your say!
The Lymington Society 