Integrated Rail Plan and Broxtowe Masterplan

Integrated Rail Plan
Strategic Masterplan

The Government has (at last) published their Integrated Rail Plan which decides the future of the Toton HS2 Hub.

We will be formulating our views over the next few days and weeks but, within all the noise created by the changes to HS2, it will be easy to lose the importance of the Strategic Masterplan for Toton & Chetwynd Barracks published by Broxtowe and for comment by the 13th December 2021.

Please read the Masterplan and visit the Virtual Room to make your own comments. If we don’t shout out now, it will be easy for the Planners and Developers to claim that we never made our views known.

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New Environment Act 2021

On the 10th November 2021 the Environment Act was passed into law. This is an incredibly significant event which places a duty on Developers to stop the decline in numbers of species and provide habitats for nature by mandating a 10% gain in biodiversity. Apart from its potential impact on biodiversity, the Act brings in sweeping responsibilities for broader sustainability. A new Office for Environmental Protection is now running (it has been a non-statutory body since July but is now statutory) and will have an overarching power to ensure the delivery of the Act. This clearly carries significant weight in any development within the Forum Plan Area and one which the Local Planning Authority must abide by and get used to very quickly. See the links below for an outline of the Act.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/world-leading-environment-act-becomes-law

https://www.endsreport.com/article/1732807/environment-act-2021-45-things-need-know

Environment Focus Group

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Forum Digest 13th November 2021

Updates

Just to bring you all up to date with a few things:-

  • The Steering Group agreed the AGM draft minutes at our last meeting, and they can be found on the AGM Page for information.
  • The application to re-designate the Forum for a further five years was submitted to Broxtowe Borough Council on 26th October, and it can be viewed on this page of the website.  
  • The revised Neighbourhood Plan will be submitted to Broxtowe Borough Council this coming Monday, along with a Supplementary Plan Modifications document detailing the changes between the June 2020 version and the revision following the SEA Environmental Report as previously explained. Once submitted we will make both of these available to view on the updated Plan page.

Toton & Chetwynd Strategic Masterplan Consultation

We will continue to mention this important consultation over the coming weeks until it closes on 13th December. The Steering Group will provide some pointers for the pros & cons of the Strategic Masterplan as soon as we can, to assist you with your own responses. Of course everyone is free to make up their own minds, but we hope and believe our views will be representative of the community within the Forum Area.

We understand that this Flyer will be delivered to every home in the Area (and more widely), but thought it useful to include here for reference in case of any postal delays. See also the website Consultations page.  

Although the Steering Group will be making comments on the Masterplan on behalf of the Forum, it is very important that you make your own comments. Follow this link, engage with the Virtual Room and make your comments.

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Activity North of Cleve Avenue – Anybody know what’s happening?

A few people have contacted us asking us if we know what is happening in the area North of Cleve Avenue where people in hi-viz jackets have been seen with what looks like sample soil drilling equipment and leaving strange markings behind.

Whilst we can speculate why they might be doing things, based upon various proposals for the area, none of the Steering Group are aware of what they are actually doing.

We’ve had a few responses and have updated our Questions & Answer page but if you know more, contact us.

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Important Toton & Chetwynd Barracks Strategic Masterplan – Open for Comments

Following the initial consultation up to November 2020, the Broxtowe Borough Council Toton & Chetwynd Barracks Strategic Masterplan is now open for comments until the 13th December 2021.

Although the Forum will be making comments on the Masterplan, it is very important that you make your own comments. Follow the link, engage with the Virtual Room and make your comments.

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Forum Digest 23rd October 2021

AGM Feedback and Actions

Thank you to those of you who have already submitted your feedback for how you found the online AGM this year. This is the last call for those who registered for the AGM and subsequently received the feedback form by email but haven’t yet completed it, to do so if you wish to provide your comments. The Steering Group will be reviewing responses at our first meeting since the AGM, on Thursday this week. We will also be electing the officers at this meeting for the coming twelve months/next AGM, and agreeing the AGM draft minutes before making them available on the website to view. Of course they can’t be approved until the next general meeting of the Forum membership.

We have also added some video clips to the AGM Page. These are our Chair, Richard Hutchinson’s report covering the last couple of years, and closing remarks looking to the future and answering a question submitted during the course of the meeting. Plus the whole of Richard Carr’s presentation, for which we are grateful for his permission to do so. Due to some technical difficulties during editing, the questions he answered at the end of his presentation aren’t included, but we will add them as another clip as soon as we can. The slides are also available separately on the page.

The final action arising from the AGM, following the unanimous approval for the Forum to extend its lifespan for a further five years, is the application to re-designate the Forum will be submitted to Broxtowe Borough Council early this week. N.B. The Forum Area doesn’t expire and therefore remains unchanged.

SEA Environmental Report

Further to the Neighbourhood Plan Update post on 2nd October, we have now received the final Environmental Report from AECOM. You can read it on the updated Plan page. Although it is a long document in total, the report itself is about a third of it at just under forty pages, with the remainder being the initial Scoping Report from April as Appendix A.

The Steering Group have now agreed revised policy wording following the recommendations in the report, and for some other policies previously suggested by Broxtowe. We will now update the Plan and submit the revised version to Broxtowe, along with a new modifications document and the Environmental Report, in the next couple of weeks. We will then add it to the website Plan page as promised. We will also need to update both the Consultation and Basic Conditions Statements ahead of the Regulation 16 consultation.

and Finally …….

You may have seen a recent BBC article on HS2, where our Chair, Richard provided some Forum comments, along with the views of other local residents. This prompted a question to us from a concerned Toton resident. You can view this and our answer on the Q&A page as below.

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Forum Digest 9th October 2021

A short Digest this week!

Thank You

A big thank you to everyone who attended our AGM on Thursday evening – it is very much appreciated that you took the time to do so, and to support the work of the Forum.

Once reviewed by the Steering Group, the draft minutes will be made available on the AGM Page of the website ahead of formal approval at the next AGM.

As this was the first time we have held an AGM (or any public meeting) online, we will be contacting all of you who Registered and indicated you would attend to ask for your feedback. This will be in the form of a short questionnaire issued in the coming week to your email inbox. We will use your comments to improve where we can the organisation, process and running of any future online meetings. It is important to us to receive your feedback, so thank you in advance for providing it, and please check your spam/junk folders just in case it lands there!

We were very pleased to hear from Richard Carr as our guest speaker during the meeting. His presentation is now available on the website AGM page, but can be viewed here. We look forward to continued collaboration with the EMDevCo (and all our stakeholders) over the coming months, and of course in the years ahead.

Finally, we will as soon as we can, update the information on the Steering Group page to introduce the newest members of the SG to you all, along with those who continue to volunteer on your behalf.

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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Forum Digest 2nd October 2021

Final Call for the Forum AGM – Thursday 7th October 2021 at 7pm via Zoom

The deadline to both Register to attend, and Vote for the motions on the Agenda, has been extended to the end of this Sunday 3rd October.

Please see the website AGM Page for details of how to do so.

All those who have registered will receive an email containing a link and instructions how to join the meeting on Monday or Tuesday next week. Please check your spam/junk folders just in case before contacting us if you haven’t received it by the end of Tuesday.

The AGM will start at 7pm prompt so you may want to login 5 or 10 minutes early to avoid missing anything!

Big Green Festival

We would like to say a big thank you to all of you who visited the Forum stall last Saturday at the Big Green Festival held at Inham Nook Recreation Ground.

We were very pleased to welcome so many of you (members & friends of the Forum, local councillors and our MP) and to have the opportunity to chat face to face, after such a long time, about our Plan and aspirations for the Area, especially in relation to environmental issues and green infrastructure, and to hear your views.

We were especially pleased to see and meet new people, and to those who signed up on the day as new members and friends a special welcome to your first Digest newsletter! We hope you find it useful & informative. All our previous posts can be found on the Our Posts page of the website if you want to catch-up on recent & past issues.

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IWM Director General Visit

We are very pleased to announce a bit of a coup! With the help of a long-time Friend of the Forum we have arranged for the Director General of the Imperial War Museum (Diane Lees) to visit Chetwynd Barracks to discuss our aspirations contained in the Plan for a Midlands IWM site in the heart of our Area. We are very excited to be able to have the opportunity to discuss our ideas with her, and to hear her views about the possibilities the site has to offer and what the (our) vision might look like in reality.

The visit is scheduled for 27th October, so we will let you know how it went afterwards. The meeting will officially be hosted by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) and led by the Forum. As well as the DIO and members of the Steering Group, we have invited the Barracks CO, the Leaders of both Broxtowe Borough and Notts County Councils, our MP, and Richard Carr and colleagues from EMDevCo (Richard is the guest speaker at our AGM). So this will be a high profile visit and meeting which we think and believe has exciting possibilities for the future of, not only our Area, but also the East Midlands region.  

Announced by the Forum Steering Group

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Neighbourhood Plan Update

As you may remember we were required to carry out a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) before our Plan could proceed to the next stage of the process towards adoption, namely Regulation 16 consultation. We have now received the draft Environmental Report from AECOM (the final outcome from the SEA). This has been reviewed by the Steering Group and comments returned to AECOM for some wording amendments. Once the final version is available, we will share it with you. However, in general terms the report found our Plan policies to, at the very least, have a minor positive impact on the environmental factors considered within the scope of the report, with some policies having a significant positive impact (mainly our environment policies on biodiversity). There were no negative impacts. Nonetheless there are some recommendations to amend a small number of policies to strengthen them, and the Plan overall. We will now work through those recommendations before submitting the revised Plan (and other documentation) to Broxtowe for Regulation 16 consultation, along with the Environmental Report. Once the revision is complete, we will update the Plan page on the website accordingly, along with a revised Roadmap to Plan adoption which is being updated for us by Broxtowe.

It has been a long time since we submitted our draft Plan in June 2020, but at last we are nearing the home straight!

As always please do feel free to ask any questions you may have on this or anything else via the Contact Us page, and we’ll do our best to answer them via the Questions and Answers page.

David, Vice Chair

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