FORWARDS
FROM THE ONGAR TOWN COUNCIL >
Ongar has faced many challenges over the years, but further changes are ahead.
Within Epping Forest District Council’s Local Plan 2011-2033, Ongar is required to provide a significant number of new dwellings within a few years.
A Neighbourhood Plan enables the local community to influence these changes and play a much stronger role in shaping the area in which we live and work.
Neighbourhood planning provides the opportunity for communities to set out a positive vision for how they would like their community to develop over the period of the district’s Local Plan, in ways that meet identified local need and make sense for local people.
The Key Benefits are:
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It can include policies to retain local character in new building design or alterations to existing buildings
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It can protect or propose the creation of open spaces, (such as green gaps, nature reserves/wildlife corridors, allotments, sports pitches, play areas, parks and gardens, and important historic assets)
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It enables us to ensure that we can protect the things we value the most
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It enables changes to be managed effectively and ensures they benefit our community
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It allows us to encourage developers to build what we believe our community needs and requires, (such as family homes and developments more suited to elderly residents)
Ongar Town Council has been working in partnership with the Ongar Neighbourhood Plan Community Group to produce a plan for Ongar and would like to thank all those involved for their dedicated work to produce it.
Kevin Piggott
Chairman
Ongar Town Council
FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN COMMUNITY GROUP >
Ongar Neighbourhood Plan Community Group would like to thank residents and businesses for their huge input over several years, to enable us to produce Ongar Neighbourhood Development Plan on behalf of Ongar Town Council.
Although a Neighbourhood Plan is essentially only Planning Policies, our engagement with the community work has also brought considerable local consensus about the need for other areas of enhancement that cannot become a planning ‘Policy’. These have been included as a separate Appendix document of Projects/Actions and includes as Regeneration of Chipping Ongar Town centre, enhancement of footpaths, development of Visitor economy etc. which will build on and enforce the aims of Ongar Neighbourhood Plan and the community’s aspirations for the future.
Following a Public Meeting in July 2017, Ongar Neighbourhood Plan Community Group was set up to be able to steer the detail and nature of Epping Forest District’s intended development in the Civil Parish of Ongar.
By late 2016, Epping Forest District Council’s Draft Local Plan was already well-advanced including detailed strategic policies for the whole District. EFDC had also allocated numbers of new housing and selected actual housing sites, including for Ongar.
Ongar residents value their small distinctive rural town of historic Chipping Ongar with outlying settlements and surrounding countryside. Whilst acknowledging the need for more homes in the locality, residents wanted to shape its future development positively to be able to
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retain and enhance the core of Chipping Ongar medieval town enclosure as a community activity hub for 21st century with sustainable development within close walking distance
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ensure development did not detract from the character and design of the neighbourhood’s built or natural environments and to enhance those environments where possible.
Local opinion was also that some development over the last few decades had resulted in harm to the character of parts of the civil Parish, and that the street scene has become dominated by motor vehicles. Ongar Neighbourhood Plan aims to redress that balance for future developments
Mary Dadd
Chairman
Ongar Neighbourhood Plan Community Group