ROPLEY’S draft neighbourhood plan will be launched at a meeting in the village hall next week.

Signed off by Ropley Parish Council, every household in the village has been notified of the launch which will start at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 30, and provide an opportunity to hear a presentation by the neighbourhood plan steering group on the details of the plan, its policies, and how to provide feedback.

It will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

The consultation phase will last for eight weeks, until March 28, when the feedback will be considered by the steering group and the parish council.

According to steering group spokesman Quentin Sandell, if a change to the plan is felt to be warranted, and is endorsed by the parish council, it will be included in the final submission to East Hampshire District Council (EHDC), which will perform its own consultation, with statutory consultees, and then submit the plan for external examination.

Providing the plan passes these stages it will then be subject to a parish-wide referendum later in the year.

The neighbourhood plan is a community-led project for guiding the future development, regeneration and conservation of an area. It is not a tool to prevent development and it will not affect planning applications that have already been submitted.

The objectives and policy areas for Ropley Neighbourhood Plan are:

* To ensure that new development is well integrated into the existing landscape, the built environment and that discrete settlements are discouraged from coalescing;

* To provide for new residential development ensuring that any development beyond existing allocations is of a scale, type and style to meet both the locally generated housing needs of the parish and the requirement of the EHDC Local Plan;

* To ensure that new development is sited so as to be accessible to social and community facilities by means other than the car;

* To protect the rural landscape and character of the parish, including views to the village centre and settlements and views from these out to the surrounding countryside, particularly viewpoints from the existing and enhanced public rights of way;

* To ensure that new development retains important existing landscape features, such as hedges, important trees, narrow and sunken lanes and the rural character of the village;

* To protect and enhance the character and setting of all listed buildings, conservation areas and other important but non-designated heritage assets within the parish;

* To protect and enhance the social and community facilities within the parish including important local green spaces;

* To ensure that rural businesses and in particular agriculture, can continue to thrive, so as to retain the countryside setting of the settlements, including if necessary allowing farmers to diversify their businesses; and

* To protect the dark night sky.

Once approved and adopted, the Ropley Neighbourhood Plan will have statutory authority that EHDC planners will be required to take into account when deciding planning applications within the parish.

Ropley began its neighbourhood plan in September 2015 with a public questionnaire that attracted 335 responses, the results of which were then translated into a set of neighbourhood policies used to refine national and local policy, and establish a set of criteria for evaluation of potential future housing sites, while engaging with landowners to discover sites which would be available and that meet those criteria.

At the same time, it was determined to commission a housing needs assessment of the total housing need in the parish.

It was noted that 36 houses already had planning permission against a parish target of 43 new homes, leaving just seven more houses required to hit the housing target for Ropley up to 2028, as determined by EHDC’s current joint core strategy (local plan).

However, it was felt “highly likely that the government will require higher targets in future” and it was decided to try to futureproof the plan by providing a pipeline that can be used to respond to future needs, possibly before 2028, if required.

Following the adoption in April of the neighbourhood plan objectives by the parish council, the steering group turned its attention to formulating policies to enforce those objectives.

They also created site assessment criteria to be used to evaluate the land parcels submitted through the landowner registration process.

These criteria were presented to and approved by the parish council in May, and a team of volunteers was formed to assess the 33 sites over the summer. A second team assessed the landscape character to highlight the key landscape features of the village, to be protected by policies.

By September, a housing needs assessment had been prepared by AECOM and its findings reviewed by the steering group who then determined a proposed housing requirement for the parish.

As part of the landscape character assessment it was decided to perform a review of areas within the parish that provide significant biodiversity value, including the Ropley Ridgeline and Park Lane Woodlands.

The team also reviewed structures of historic and/or architectural significance in the parish that may warrant protection. Ropley already has two conservation areas as well as 44 Listed structures, including four tombs in the churchyard.

By February 2017, five green spaces had been identified for proposed designation as spaces protected from development. They included the fields between Vicarage Lane, Hook Lane and Petersfield Road, the field between Church Street and Church Lane, fields between Ropley House and the recreation ground, pastureland south of School Lane, and the area surrounding the village pond.

In addition, the group was assessing the need for self-build and affordable housing, removing the need for EHDC to allocate any further sites in Ropley for this housing class, providing more certainty for the parish on housing numbers.

The proposal is for 18 additional dwellings across two sites, at Hale Close and Petersfield Road, in addition to the nine dwellings expected to be built on the old Chequers site.

These units, together with the sites allocated under part two of the EHDC Local Plan, will cover the housing requirements of the village up to 2028, and will remove the need for EHDC to allocate any further affordable housing to Ropley as part of the Local Plan part three allocation.

Mr Sandell said: “The public consultation phase is really the opportunity for all Ropley villagers to take a hard look at what the neighbourhood plan team has spent the last couple of years doing and provide us with feedback on what you think.”

The meeting information will be posted on village noticeboards and copies of the plan will be available to download at myropley.org.uk, with hard copies available to view in prominent locations around the parish.

Written feedback will also be accepted on forms that will be available from the Courtyard village shop, and completed forms can be posted to or deposited at the village shop.