Proposed Plan consultation: Week 1 summary

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It’s good to see word about the Proposed Plan getting out there.  We’ve been keen to use as many ways as possible to let people know the Proposed Plan and associated documents are out for consultation.  We’ve had Public Notices in our offices and in newspapers, we’ve promoted the consultation on our website and social media and we’re pleased to see the coverage we have generated in these newspapers and online:

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A number of people have had questions about elements of the Proposed Plan or needed to check details about the process.  We sent out just over 800 ‘neighbour notification’ letters to those living near a proposed site for development, so that’s prompted some of these enquiries. If you have a question, there are lots of ways to get in touch whether you prefer to phone in, email us, pop into our offices or even drop us a line on social media.

It’s been good to see some people already using our online system to submit their formal response to the consultation – we have had 8 submissions to date.

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Our dedicated website has had over 3200 page views in the past week alone, and we know our posts on Facebook have reached some 5000 people in the past week, and our Twitter posts have reached 3500 people.  We wrote a blog to kickstart the consultation and it’s good to see people spending time online reading the blog and clicking through the other pages on the website from there.

General themes coming through

What we’ve heard so far has generally been a mix of positive support for different types of proposed development in various locations and a need to clarify what the neighbour notification letters are saying. These letters are intended to simply show the proposed land use e.g. housing, economic development or visitor experience (tourism) on different sites throughout the Park. The vast majority of sites do not currently have end developers or the finer details such as architectural drawings as that’s the kind of detail that would usually become available at a different stage in the process – the planning application stage. The Proposed Plan shows proposed development sites and policies to assess future applications against. The ‘Guidance’ documents provide support information for various topics in the Plan such as Housing, Developer Contributions and Design.

Capturing as many views as possible

We encourage you to provide formal comments (whether you’re supporting or objecting) online or by filling out a Representation form and either emailing it to hello@ourlivepark.com or posting it to us at:

Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Authority,
Carrochan, 
Carrochan Road,
Balloch,
G83 8EG. 

All formal comments we receive during this 6-week consultation will be subject to an ‘Examinations’ process where a ‘Reporter’ assigned by the Scottish Government determines all formal representations to the Proposed Local Development Plan along with our recommendations. Representations to Guidance will be determined separately by the Board of the National Park Authority.

So please get in touch to let us know what you think, and to encourage your family and friends to do the same before our consultation deadline 5pm on Monday 29 June 2015.