Around the country local communities are writing Neighbourhood Plans which contain local residents and businesses vision for how their village, town or district should be developed. Inside these plans are ideas on where and how new homes should be built, but they also contain plans for community facilities and projects for tackling local issues.
We know parish council’s in Letchworth’s surrounding villages are busy putting their plans together. Letchworth is special, we have a Heritage Foundation and design principles, so do we need a Neighbourhood Plan? The Heritage Foundation can only influence the land they own. A neighbourhood plan, if adopted by a referendum of local residents, would apply to the whole town. As Letchworth does not have a town council a Neighbourhood Forum would need to be formed with a membership that represents the town to lead on producing a plan. This is challenging but with support from the  District Council and hopefully from the Heritage Foundation we should be well placed to get going with producing a Neighbourhood Plan.
Transition Town Letchworth are excited about the opportunity offered by Neighbourhood Planning. At last there is a chance to consider issues beyond volume of housing stock, for example, cycle routes, access to green spaces, community venues and playgrounds and the types of houses that will be built at each location.
TTL will be exploring the process involved in producing a Neighbourhood Plan for Letchworth at our Transition Tuesday on 13th September, (Mrs Howard Hall, Door open 7:15pm for refreshments for a 7:30pm start). We hope people from across the town who think that Letchworth may benefit from a Neighbourhood Plan will join us at this event. For a Neighbourhood Plan to be successful it would need to have been produced by representatives across the town so let’s use the 13th September as a first chance for representatives of the town to start exploring ideas together.