Involved Communities are Growing Communities
"Scotland's planning system is undergoing its most radical overhaul in 60 years.
Scottish Ministers are determined to make the planning system more inclusive and
accessible to people, with greater openness and accountability in the decision making process.
This cannot be achieved without reforming how planning involves people - but more
importantly how people are involved in planning. It also requires real culture change
- from everyone involved in the planning process".
(Scottish Government, Planning Advice Note 81, 2007)
At Lomond Group, we welcome the Governments drive to include communities in the planning process as we continually strive to extend our past and current community engagement programme. We think it is important that you have your say on how your community develops and get involved with planning for its future.
This is how Ceres got involved:
A questionnaire was put together, printed and distributed to every household in Ceres on the week of the 25th August 2008. In addition to this, an area of the Lomond Homes website was designed to allow people to access the questionnaire electronically and respond online. This gave the community an opportunity to respond to the Lomond Group, expressing their views on the proposals as submitted to the Planning Authority.
To complement this process the Lomond Group held an exhibition in the village during the day of Saturday the 30th August and in the evenings of Tuesday and Wednesday the 2nd and 3rd of September. An exhibition was prepared which illustrated and described the community engagement as it related to the proposals in Ceres village. Lomond Group staffed the events and were on hand to field and answer any questions that members of the public raised relative to the proposed development. Sealed boxes were available to allow people to post their completed questionnaires at the exhibitions.
The community engagement exercise lasted until the 17th of September extending the opportunity for villagers to express their views electronically or alternatively by posting them in a sealed box held at the Meldrums Hotel.
Total number of questionnaires returned = 72
Total number of visitors to open exhibition = 65
The comments received at the open door exhibitions and the comments contained within the completed questionnaires were considered by the company to be useful and succeeded in allowing members of the Ceres community direct access to ask questions and raise concerns as well as make positive comments relating to the proposed residential development. The footfall over the 3 exhibition dates was less than anticipated however, as the comments set out within the attachment below show, there is general support for the proposals within the village as well as objections and concerns. The negative comments received at the exhibition and within the questionnaires are in the main, the same as objections presented directly to the planning department against the application.
It will now be the focus of the community engagement process to mitigate and alleviate as many of these objections and concerns as possible by addressing these through any progressive detailed planning application should the Council be minded to grant outline planning permission. It is envisaged that this will be taken forward through guidance from the Council and possible further community consultation within Ceres.
Click here to download the full breakdown of results.