Local Plan Newsletter – Issue 10

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Copy of the Newsletter

To read your own copy of the latest Newsletter from the Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council Planning Department, click the Local Plan Newsletter 10 July 2016 FINAL

The Local Plan – the latest stage

The Submission of the Final Draft of the Local Plan will be considered by the Borough Council’s Cabinet Housing & Planning Panel (CHPP) on 20 July and then by Cabinet on 2 August. If approved, it will be published for consultation for eight weeks commencing on 22 August and ending on 17 October at 5pm. A series of consultation events will be held across the borough and the dates and venues for these will be published on the Council’s website.

WPAG Response 

WPAG representatives will be working in a sub-group formed by the Welwyn Parish Council’s Planning & Licensing Committee, and representatives of the Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group, to co-ordinate a response to the Borough Council  from Welwyn’s community..

The WPAG is also making plans to highlight the various proposals within the Final Draft Local Plan, as they affect the Parish of Welwyn,  in a series of articles to be posted on this website. These posts will include a summary of the sites selected for housing in Welwyn.

Your Comments

WPAG members will be able to post their comments on the website blog, and in this way, help us shape our contribution to the Welwyn Parish Council sub-group.

The Borough Council will of course be inviting the general public to comment direct to them as part of the Consultation Process.

 

Defibrillator – Welwyn High Street – Now Ready for use

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Welwyn Village now has an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) located outside Barclays Bank in Church Street.  This is accessible 24/7 to anyone witnessing a person in cardiac arrest (or having a suspected heart attack) and will significantly increase the chance of saving their life before Paramedics arrive.
If you are in this situation:
  • Call 999AED Barclays Welwyn
  • Go to the AED cabinet outside Barclays
  • The Ambulance Operator will give you the code to open the cabinet door so you can retrieve the AED and at the same time will despatch medical help
  • Take it to the patient and follow the easy video and audio instructions on the AED unit
  • You cannot harm someone in error; if they are not actually in cardiac arrest (heart attack) the AED will not shock them!
Local Training
Clearly, despite the designed ease of use, it is important that local people should familiarise themselves where the AED is sited, so that in an emergency they are in a strong position to advise and help visitors to Welwyn’s retail centre. Despite the ease of use of this equipment,  extra training will be provided in due course for interested and concerned local people,.
You too can Help!
  • Please pass the message on. 
  • Tell people where the defibrillator is sited.
  • Tell people to be confident and use it in an emergency.
  • Tell people that they will be given clear instructions.
 This could save a life!

Welwyn’s First Defibrillator Installed

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Welwyn’s First Defibrillator Installed
As a result of an initiative and fund raising jointly by St Mary’s Church and the Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group, an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) has now been installed in Welwyn High Street, and will soon be commissioned into service for the community.
The AED is designed to be used by anyone who witnesses someone in cardiac arrest in conjunction with calling 999.
Sponsors

Four Welwyn businesses have actively contributed as sponsors: Putterills, Neel Dentistry, Mimram Vets and Susu, along with many very generous individual AED Barclays Welwynbenefactors.

The Welwyn Wailers also gave a substantial donation from their 2016 ‘Wail’.
Training
The Community Heartbeat Trust will provide some training and the Parish Plan Action Group will advise about that when known.
More details, including instructions in the use of the AED, will be issued on the WPAG website as soon as the AED is commisioned and ready for service.
A Second defibrillator planned.
The Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group is well on the way to raising sufficient funds for a second AED for the civic parish of Welwyn and the project team will meet in early July 2016 to debate where it should be located.
More about that when it is decided.

Bridge Cottage – Patient Participation Group

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P1060360Following an initiative by the Welwyn Parish Plan Action Group the Bridge Cottage Patient Participation Group was formed in February 2016.

The Bridge Cottage P.P.G. comprises 11 volunteers, all of whom are patients of the practice who want to help it provide the best health service possible.

The Stated Aims of the P.P.G. are:

  • To improve communication between doctors and patients.
  • To get advice and support from the NHS and from the national PPG organisation
  • To support practice clinics,  health clinics, health campaigns and local carers.

  • To plan surveys of patient experiences.

  • To discuss changes at the surgery which might affect patients, before they happen, and give them your feedback.

  • TO BE A CRITICAL FRIEND TO OUR DOCTORS AND STAFF.

You are encouraged to pass comments and queries to

Welwyn’s Listed Buildings: 29 The High Street

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This is the second of a series highlighting Welwyn’s rich heritage of Listed Buildings. It is extracted from an old document found within WPAG archives which is represented as  ‘the 29th list of buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest‘,  (for Welwyn Parish within the District of Welwyn Hatfield), and ‘certified on 9th January 1989′ by the Executive County & Estates Officer of Hertfordshire County Council.

N.B. This might not be the latest such list, and should not therefore be relied upon for its accuracy. There have been amendments, and this extract is provided solely for information and interest.

Welwyn High Street (West Side) No. 29

Grade II Listed P1080703

House. Early C19 front, probably to an earlier timber framed building. Roughcast. Old tile hipped roof. 2 storeys. 3 flush sash windows in architrave surrounds. Semi-circular porch with thin wooden columns on cement piers. Mutuled cornice and door with segmental fan. 1st floor French window.

P1080706

1-window block set back on W with large chimney stack at join and 1st floor sash window. Street front with modern shop window.

 

 

Usage:

Currently Old Welwyn Florist.

Formerly ( circa 1967) W.H. Lee & Co – Estate Agents

What is – a listed building?

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Why are buildings listed?

The Secretary of State for the Environment is required to compile lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest for the guidance of local planning authorities. Conservation policies are often based on the lists.

How are the buildings chosen?

Principles were originally set up by an expert committee of architects, antiquaries and historians.

Buildings that qualify are:

  • all buildings before 1700 which survive in anything like their original condition
  • most buildings between 1700 and 1840, though selection is necessary
  • between 1840 and 1914 only buildings of definite quality and character .

The selection is intended to include the principal works of the principal architects. Selected buildings of 1914 to 1939 are also considered.

In choosing buildings, particular attention is paid to special value within certain types, either for architectural or planning reasons or as illustrating social and economic history (for instance, industrial buildings, railway stations, schools, hospitals, theatres, townhalls, markets, exchanges, almshouses, prisons, lock-ups, mills).

How are they graded?

A  survey is carried out for each local authority area, and buildings are classified in grades to show their relative importance.

Grade I  Buidings of exceptional interest

Grade II  Buildings of special interest which warrant every effort being made to preserve them.

How do Welwyn’s listed buidings rate?

The buildings in the Welwyn schedule are all of special architectural or historic interest,

 

 

Welwyn’s Listed Buildings: 15 Church Street

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This article is the first of a series highlighting Welwyn’s rich heritage of Listed Buildings. It is extracted from an old document found within WPAG archives which is represented as  ‘the 29th list of buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest‘,  (for Welwyn Parish within the District of Welwyn Hatfield), and ‘certified on 9th January 1989′ by the Executive County & Estates Officer of Hertfordshire County Council.

N.B. This might not be the latest such list, and should not therefore be relied upon for its accuracy. There have been amendments, and this extract is provided solely for information and interest.

Welwyn Church Street (south side) No. 15 (Formerly listed as No.15 “Wellingham Store”) Grade II Listed

Early C19 warehouse and shop. Painted red brick, low slate roof. Long Range. E side has 3 1st floor small pane ventilators and ground floor wood frame cart entrance with 20151201_115821carved angle braces; W side has 2 shop fronts both with pilaster and paterae surrounds and fascia cornices. Left hand side is 36 panes, right hand side is double fronted with deep recess to door. Upper-floor window bands with similar glazing bars.

(The photo was taken on 1st December 2015 and shows the building in its current use as a Hair Dressing Salon, and decorated with Christmas Lighting).

Formerly: circa 1967 Grocer (13/15 Church Street) W. Wellingham Ltd

Planning Portal News – 26th November 2015 – Research identifies most promising locations for housing growth.

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The following is report is by the  on November 26 2015

New research from Knight Frank and planning and design consultancy Barton Willmore has identified local authority areas where economic and planning data, combined with regional knowledge, suggest good fundamentals for residential development in the short to medium term.

Factors taken into account include forecast economic and employment growth, as well as future housing supply and demand. Sales to stock ratios, social environment, infrastructure and affordability were also measured.

Local planning knowledge was then added, examining which planning authorities had a five-year land supply and where a local plan was in place, as well as looking at policy support for housing and economic growth.

This, along with input from Knight Frank land agents, resulted in a list of areas where the fundamentals suggested development opportunities.

Key findings highlighted that:

  • Manchester and Leeds are expected to be among the councils which will experience the strongest rates of household growth over the next ten years
  • In the Midlands, Warwick scores highly on “liveability”, and also has strong employment growth forecasts, while robust household growth is projected in Leicester
  • Brentwood is one of the hotspots with the strongest forecasts for future employment increases, as well as showing one of the largest imbalances between pipeline supply and household growth over the next five years
  • South Cambridgeshire also has a particularly strong forecast for employment growth and has been rated highest in an independent survey of rural locations across the UK
  • Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset local authorities have a local plan and a five-year housing supply, and the determination to step up development
  • Guildford and Reigate & Banstead in Surrey are well positioned to take advantage of the housing need generated by the capital.

Iain Painting, Senior Planning Partner, Barton Wilmore, said: “Our shortlist of development opportunities is aligned with an increased emphasis on urbanisation, focusing on many of England’s key cities both in and well beyond the South East.

“Opportunities exist where local authorities are struggling to source a five-year land supply through the local plan system, such as York, but also where councils have a positive appetite for growth, supported by policy, such as Leeds and Bath.”

Planning Portal News – 19th November 2015 – CPRE Challenge to Housing Targets

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The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has called for an overhaul of the way local authorities set housing targets after claiming the present system led to countryside being lost unnecessarily.

The pressure group claimed in a report that research it has commissioned showed that local authorities were being asked to base their plans on aspiration rather than need. This resulted in ever higher housing targets and the consequent unnecessary release of countryside for development without an increase in overall house building.

(The above is an extract from the Planning Portal News 19th November 2015).

The Answer Lies in the Soil – Geology Expert comes to Welwyn

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Welwyn Natural History Society and the Hertfordshire Natural History Society

Joint Annual Invited Lecture

Dr Haydon Bailey will be speaking at this year’s Annual Invited Lecture at the Civic Centre on Wednesday 25th November at 8 p.m in place of Professor John Catt, who is unfortunately unwell.

The original talk subject ‘Aspects of Hertfordshire Geology & Landscape‘, has now been sub-titled ‘Living in Hertfordshire – for the last 100 million years‘.

Dr Bailey is founder and director of Network Stratigraphic Consulting Ltd, in Potters Bar, and is a micropalaentologist specialising in the cretaceous period, and chalk field studies for the oil and related industries in the UK, Europe, and North Africa.

Dr Bailey co-authored ‘Hertfordshire Geology and landscape’ with Professor John Catt, which was published in 2010 to national acclaim. He contributed the chapters on ‘The Upper Cretaceous period’ and ‘Mineral Resources and Building Stones’.

This book is intended to explain the geology of the county to natural historians and others working in the county, who have little knowledge of geology. In the book, Prof. John Catt describes Hertfordshire, ‘in many respects an undistinguished county’, but one that has amazingly interesting geology.

For more information about the Invited Talk go to the Hertfordshire Natural History website .

The Dr Haydon Bailey talk will be held in the Civic Centre Large Hall at 8 p.m. on Wednesday 25th November.

Everyone welcome – entrance £3 – pay at the door, includes a glass of wine or soft drink.