THORP ARCH NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN

STEERING GROUP

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Meeting on 25th April 2012

Attendees: P. Smart, S. Humphreys*, H. Chapman, J. Clayton, M. Smyth*, J. Richardson, R. West. (*Members of the Parish Council).

Also: C. Pool (Parish Clerk)

1.  Apologies for absence

Apologies were received from A. Osborn.

2.  Minutes of Previous meeting

CP apologised for referring to the SHLAA site as 1105 throughout, when of course it should have been 1055.

3.  Actions from meeting on 28 March

CP said that it had been confirmed that Thorp Arch fell into “Other rural” as far as the LCC Core Strategy was concerned and as such did not require a commitment to the 20% target for small developments. However it was also noted that the LCC Strategy was still draft and that it was inconsistent in its allocation to these categories. Given the presence of SHLAA 1055 as a brownfield site, this could be an academic argument.

CP had circulated minutes of the Leeds NE Area Project Board minutes to members.

CP had informed LCC of Thorp Arch’s intention to produce a plan.

4.  Report Walton meeting

PS and JR had met with Randal Brown who is the Chairman of both Walton Parish Council and the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group. PS said that it was a very helpful meeting. He now understood their methodology and the key issues and was impressed how the Group had got together, their leadership, structure and the progress they had made. In particular, Walton had set out some key aspirations for the village for the next few years and then had developed their plan around these key requirements. Walton is more than happy for Thorp Arch to utilise anything they have developed in the development of their plan (The draft is now published on www.walton-pc.gov.uk).

PS said that the key documents were the Project Plan, Communications Plan and the draft plan. Randal Brown had used his experience as a senior LCC officer to get to grips with the “process” of producing the plan and that he was fortunate to have a central team with expertise in key areas (a senior manager with a national estate agent, a person who runs a website company and a marketing specialist).

PS said that it was clear that Randal Brown had put a tremendous personal effort into the activity and this was greater than had hitherto been understood by this Thorp Arch Group.

It was also noted that Walton had been successful in obtaining contributions to work effort at nil cost.

The Walton Group was holding a consultation on the weekend of 28/29 April and PS urged as many of this Group as possible to attend.

PS had also looked at some other activity such as Barwick & Scholes which had a simpler approach.

5. Next Steps

PS said that he thought that more progress could be made if the Steering Group split into two communities in the way that Walton had: a small central team to develop some of the key elements with a larger Group acting as a check and balance on the work of the central team. Initially the central team would allocate tasks to individual members to come up with a Project Plan and Communications Plan to be discussed and refined at the next full meeting. The Group agreed that this would be an appropriate way to continue.

HC said that she was willing to get involved in the design elements of the plan

PS said that he was keen that JR and AO should join too.

JR said that he knew of a potential project manager in the village that he could approach.

Meanwhile, further research was required on certain historical aspects of the village, largely to ensure that sufficient evidence is forthcoming to justify the reasons for not developing at other sites than SHLAA 1055. It was thought that Tom Kilby had old photographs and documents and JR said that he could lend PS a book on Thorp Arch’s history.

6. Fund Raising

The Group discussed the costs of the plan. CP gave some indications of the types of cost being incurred in Walton. SH confirmed that the Council had committed £2K in the year 2012/3. CP said that the Project Board was working on a template for Councils to apply for “Awards for all” grants towards plan costs. He expected details to be circulated after the next board meeting on 1 May.

7. Wider audience

It was recognised that the Group needs to get the message out about the plan to a wider audience. It was agreed that whilst Causeway was one vehicle, it should also be putting more about the Group’s deliberations on a website and that the village website (www.thorparch.org.uk) was more appropriate than the Council one, not least because of its flexibility to add graphical elements.

It was also hoped to increase the attendance of the Steering Group in its new role as the sounding board and reviewer for the work of the central team. Group members were urged to recruit additional attendees.

8. Next meetings

Central team: Thursday 17 May.

Full Group: Wednesday 30 May.

Both at 7pm in The Pax

Colin Pool

28 April 2012