Clapham Village (Parish) Design Statement
How do you want Clapham to look in 10-15 years’ time?
A small working group, appointed by the Parish Council, has been putting together Clapham’s ‘Village Design Statement’ (CVDS) with appendices.
What is a Village (Parish) Design Statement?
A Village (or Parish) Design Statement is a set of guidelines which fleshes out the design-related policies in the Neighbourhood Plan. The aim is to help people put together planning applications which stand a good chance of acceptance by the National Park Authority.
Who’s involved?
The working group currently consists of:
- Gilly Gale
- Andrea Hardisty
- Sally Morris
Chris Paterson of the South Downs National Park Authority has been providing advice.
What’s happened so far?
The group identified eight proposed policies, based on what residents told us (both in the original Neighbourhood Plan consultation, and in our subsequent parish walks and well attended open meetings). They have also drafted most of the supporting background text, including a detailed inventory of every building in the Parish.
Then they conducted a survey of every household in the Parish, to find out what residents thought of the proposed policies. Thirty-five responses were received, which is about a quarter of all households. While all the policies were supported by a significant majority, some useful suggestions were made on re-wording or clarification.
Based on the survey responses, the working group has revised the policies (and broke them down into separate policies where they covered more than one point). The revised policies were approved by the Parish Council at their meeting on 28th January 2021.
The Parish Council approved the whole document at its meeting on 5th May 2021 and then submitted it to the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA).
The SDNPA carried out the first round of public consultation required to adopt the CVDS as a Supplementary Planning Document as set out in the Authority’s Statement of Community Involvement. This consultation ran for a period of 8 weeks from Monday 13 June to Monday 8 August 2022.
After a further consultation period, which ran from 19 August to 30 September 2022, the SDNPA Planning Committee approved the Clapham Village Design Statement for adoption as a Supplementary Planning Document on November 10th 2022.
The document is now part of the Clapham’s Neighbourhood Development Plan. This will mean that the policies must be considered when the Parish Council is responding to a planning application.