Wendens Ambo Neighbourhood Plan Pages 02/06/2025 WENDENS AMBO NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN Blog – From December 2024 onwards. Neighbourhood Plan Blog No1 SOWING THE SEEDS OF OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN. Dec 2024 This month the steering group has commissioned three pieces of important work for the development of our Neighbourhood Plan: Community Survey This survey is absolutely crucial to collecting your views on our village and how you would like it to grow, develop and preserve its essential character in the process. The survey can be returned along with the Housing Needs Survey for the RCCE (se below) to collate on our behalf, or there is an on-line alternative. Your responses will be anonymous. Please, please, make sure you support this survey, so our Neighbourhood Plan reflects everyone’s views, desires, and aspirations for our village, Wendens Ambo. Housing Needs Survey This survey which is a mandatory part of our NP development is being run by the Rural Country Council of Essex (RCCE) on behalf of Uttlesford County Council. It will explore what housing needs people living and/or working in the Village have now, or will have in the next five years; i.e. family members who are unable to afford commercial housing or access rental housing, or those who may be contemplating downsizing and would like to stay in the locality. You will now have received the survey documentation and will be able to reply by postage-paid mail, or by doing the survey on-line. Please note that these responses will be held in commercial confidence and the Parish Council will only the given a summary of the responses. The survey period ends on the 14th March, so please make sure you respond promptly to ensure your voice gets heard. Landscape Character Assessment: This assessment of our Village, Landscape, Environment and Amenities was commission by the Parish Council and is being carried out by Liz Lake Associates. This Assessment will be an important source of information for our Neighbourhood Plan (NP), and will be available for Parishioners to view and inspect at our drop-in NP Community Event to be held at our Village Hall on the 2nd March 2025, 10am to 3pm. Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 2 March 2025 – WENDENS AMBO NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN DROP-IN EVENT THIS SUNDAY, 2ND MARCH 2025, 10am-3pm, WENDENS AMBO VILLAGE HALL Please come to our drop-in event – open to all villagers and to anyone who is interested in how Wenden might look like in future years. If you are concerned about development in the village and/or you would like your say in what to protect and preserve and what you would like to improve, please visit our exhibition. You’ll be able to: Find out about neighbourhood plans and how work on our Wenden plan is progressing. Speak to representatives from the Parish Council, RCCE & Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group members who will be on hand to answer your questions. Complete our Community Survey (if you haven’t already done so!). There will be tea, coffee, cake and other tasty refreshments too, plus a donated raffle prize (Ticket Enclosed)! NB The deadline for completing the Community Survey & Housing Needs Survey is 14th March 2025. Complete the paper survey delivered to your house or use the links below: Community Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R2HWVFK Housing Needs Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WendensHNS25 Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 3 May 2025 – WENDENS AMBO NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN UPDATE Our work on the Neighbourhood Plan continues, largely behind the scenes. We have a lot of analysis work to complete as we go through all the responses to our Community Survey, line by line, to make sure we capture all the topics and comments. We await the results of the Housing Needs Survey from RCCE. We will also be seeking the views from a number of village organisations such as the cricket club, Wendens Ambo Society and others. We will share results from these surveys over the next few months. Our grant period ended on 31st March and we will be exploring our eligibility for further grants. We’ll post the occasional update on our page on the Parish Council’s website: https://wendensamboparishcouncil.org.uk You can find the Appendix from the Landscape Character Assessment carried out earlier this year on the link below:https://wendensamboparishcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2025/05/2839-02-App-A-LPLCA-Document.pdf It shows the 8 distinct character areas defined by this study. The full report is very large – please get in touch if you’d like to read it. For further information or questions, please contact us via our parish clerk at [email protected] Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 4 – June 2025 NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN COMMUNITY SURVEY UPDATE. We have now reviewed all your Community Survey comments and have presented these as ‘Word Clouds’ to give a quick impression of what you said. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appeared in your responses. Please open the link below to see details. Thank you for all your contributions! WA Neighbourhood Plan Analysis of Community Survey Responses We are further analysing your comments to pull out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and also reviewing the Housing Needs Survey report from the Rural Country Council of Essex. Please check our future Blogs for details. Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 5 – July to September 2025 WENDENS AMBO NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN Funding update The focus of the Steering Group’s work over the summer has been the budget. Our last update mentioned changes to the availability of grants for villages such as Wenden to support the making of Neighbourhood Plans. Consequently, at September’s Parish Council meeting, Steering Group Chair, Anita Chandraker, outlined the proposed budget to see the NP project through to its next stages. This involves producing a detailed draft plan and policies, further consultation and a village referendum. To do this we need professional support from a planning consultant, and this professional support forms the major part of our costs and budget. In October Steering Group members will be attending a workshop led by our chosen planning consultant, Ian Poole, from People4Places Consultancy Ltd. (This follows a selection process based on cost and the close-matching and understanding of Wenden and our plan. The PC additionally compared costs and benefits against costs from other councils who had drawn up Neighbourhood Plans and our proposals were considered to be worthwhile). The PC approved funding for the remainder of this financial year. The steering group will continue to provide updates and briefing to the PC and village community, including the budget for the next financial year 2026-27. A decision on funding for the next financial year will be made by the Parish Council as part of the December annual 2025 precept bid to UDC. The Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group would like to thank Wendens Ambo Parish Council for their support in progressing the Neighbourhood Plan. We would also thank our district councillors for their continued encouragement that making a Neighbourhood Plan will be very beneficial to the village in the light of central government planning reforms. Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 6 – August to December 2025 Happy New Year to everyone who lives and works in Wenden and thanks to all those people and organisations who have contributed to our work during the past months. The Steering Group is continuing to collect and collate information about the village and, most importantly, your views, so we can plan for the next Community Engagement Event. We haven’t set a date yet but we hope to hold the event in the first quarter of 2026. This will be an important stage in preparing our Neighbourhood Plan as we will be seeking your views on what policies should be included in Wenden’s plan. Everyone will have the chance to comment on these proposals. If you would like to be involved in the next stage of consultation and drafting of our Neighbourhood Plan, it’s not too late to join the Steering Group. You can contact us via our parish clerk (details below) or speak to any member of the committee (Anita Chandraker, Cliff Snow, Richard Walford, Ann Wade, Liz Johnson & Alan Lovett). We do need another Steering Group member ‘or two’; we are a friendly bunch who work together in a relaxed and supportive manner. Please contact Cliff on 07736 169 276 if you would like to join us, particularly if you have some Web updating skills. Neighbourhood Plan Blog No 7 – January to April 2026 Copies of Posters from Village Event 12th April 2026 Please click on link below: Website-Event-Posters-version-3 PDF (15May26),pdf
