Litter Pick – 10am Saturday 28th March

On Saturday 28th March we will be holding a village spring clean.  If you would   be prepared to give an hour of your time please come to the Parish Hall for 10am to be issued with gardening gloves and a bin bag.  It would be helpful to have an idea of numbers so please let the Clerk know if you think you can help (ridingmillclerk@gmail.com).

Your support would be greatly appreciated

Litter-Pick

Proposed changes to NCC’s Planning Services

NCC  is proposing to make changes to how it will manage planning applications, which might mean the removal of Area Committee West.

In response to these proposals, the PC has made the following comments to NCC:

“Mr G Paul, Director – Planning, Economy & Housing, NCC

Dear Mr Paul

We are writing in response to your letter dated 5th February 2015 inviting comments from Town and Parish Councils regarding the review of the Planning Service.

Whilst appreciating many of the difficulties faced by the County Council we believe that the changes proposed weaken the democratic process.  We therefore caution against implementing some of the proposals, in particular:

  •  The reduction to the number of Committees and replacement by a strategic committee

Removing Area Committee West would be extremely detrimental as it is important for local residents to engage with planners and they will only do this if these meetings are accessible.  We also note that Northumberland, as the least densely populated county in England, has special features of its own and should not necessarily be compared to the ‘average’ county.

  •  Movement towards delegated decisions

We believe that if a Parish Council makes a material objection it should on balance trigger the application being considered by Committee.  We are however happy to support the development of clear guidelines stipulating the number of objections required before an application goes to committee (which could be higher than at present) and that the objections must be shown to be material objections in planning terms (i.e. not spurious or irrelevant ones).

We ask that these comments are reported to the Scrutiny Committee next week.”

 

 

NCC Local Flood Risk Management Strategy

Northumberland County Council has been developing a Local Flood Risk Management Strategy which will outline how it will manage flooding and work with other authorities to manage all sources of flooding, now and in the future.

To view the Strategy documents and make comments please click on the link below:

http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=17422

The Consultation ends 24th April 2015