(Ed. In David Cheek’s Post of 22nd March 2020 you were briefed on the Hertfordshire County Council’s (HCC) Consultation on future transport plans, which was scheduled to close on 31st March 2020).
Working with the Welwyn Parish Council, and the Welwyn Parish Plan Group, your Committee studied those sections relevant to Welwyn and we contributed to the submission produced by the WPC.
We re-produce below the Introduction to the WPC Submission for your convenience.
We expect that the full WPC submission on this Consultation, which is very lengthy, will be published shortly on the WPC website.
Welwyn Parish Council
1. INTRODUCTION
Welwyn Parish Council is pleased to offer comment within the consultation process, on this important piece of strategic planning.
Welwyn civil parish has three main settlements, separated from each other by fields and woodlands of the green belt: the settlement of Oaklands & Mardley Heath and the villages of Digswell and Welwyn. The parish is largely residential but small businesses and farmsteads are scattered throughout. Residents and businesses benefit from post office facilities and a mix of shops in all three areas and a wide range of amenities: a primary school in each area (the secondary schools are in WGC or further afield); the Welwyn Community Library; Welwyn has 3 churches, Digswell has 2 and both have Village Halls used for recreation, sport and social events.
Soccer and cricket pitches in Welwyn, owned and maintained by the parish council, are used by clubs from within the Parish and further afield; there are tennis clubs at Welwyn and Digswell, a bowls club at Welwyn and children’s play areas in Welwyn and Digswell. There are many open spaces and local nature reserves with rural footpaths, providing for informal recreation as well as local wildlife. With a population of over 9000, our Parish is relatively large; it is highly regarded as a place for families to live and house prices and the buoyant property market reflect that.
Comments on the GTP have been co-ordinated under the aegis of the which included:
• Welwyn Planning and Amenity Group – WPAG – formed over 60 years ago, to encourage, and coordinate public interest in all issues concerning Planning and Amenities in and around Welwyn)
• Welwyn Parish Plan Group – WPPG – who compiled the current Parish Plan in 2008 which sought to represent the wishes and ideas of the community in Digswell, Oaklands & Mardley Heath and Welwyn, propose a strategy to show what we should aim to achieve. It has been used to help drive change and as a reference to influence policy
• Individual residents.
The Working Group has also encouraged residents to make their own responses to this consultation.
The majority of the detail relating to Welwyn Parish is contained in the South Central Growth & Transport Plan; only one project (PR27) in the North Central GTP is relevant to Welwyn but it should be noted that SM93 (in the NC Plan) duplicates the detail of SM98 (in the SC Plan), albeit with a different and arguably misleading title. The following sections offer comments on the various schemes that impact upon our parish area.