At the recent meeting of the Town Council planning committee it was recommended that the town council lead the development of a Neighbourhood Plan for the town.
Thame has a very good neighbourhood plan that gives a framework for decisions about future development – all agreed in a referendum of the town. Wantage will soon have one too.
People in South Abingdon have already been through consultations towards developing a Resident’s Plan (called SARP). A lot of work was put in by volunteers gathering information, working with people who had already developed successful Residents Plans. As a result a questionnaire was put together to go to every house in the area. That was sent to the Vale of White Horse District Council for approval, and was never heard of again. Perhaps, instead, the Town Council can bring back that good work into the town’s neighbourhood plan.
At the meeting, Hester, representing The Friends of Abingdon, said The Friends are very much in favour of such a plan as it will allow more local control of CIL Money (Community Infrastructure Levy paid by developers to build in the area), and help control development. The Friends hope to see a wide variety of people involved to ensure the process is inclusive.
So the next stage is for the town council to put money in the budget for next year, to hire a consultant with the expertise to lead such a process, and get all sorts of people involved. Then in a couple of years we can all vote on it.
SARIP I attended the exhibition, submitted my comments and spoke to the people that came along on that wet and miserable morning.
I waited and waited the questionnaire, nothing, no information on the web site nothing. As usual Abingdon on Thames residents kept in the dark and fed B……….h.
If its not friends of Abingdon, no one is interested, can you wonder why these plans are received with a healthy degree of scepticism.
I wonder how many plans and glossy brochures Abingdon has had over the last 15 years?
They generally end up stating the obvious or getting quietly forgotten when the next shiny new initiative comes along.
The problem with the South Abingdon Residents plan as I could see it, although it started off well and residents were involved. n the end it just ended up with representatives of organizations and political bodies being involved and the involvement of the real residents fell away. When ordinary residents were involved it achieved good results such as the fight against litter and graffiti. It is the same with the Police Action Group. Only notable people are involved and not residents. This is not how other areas have operated. They involve actual residents to be effective. Also it became clear that the idea of local ism and the ‘Big Society’ were all just a myth. We were proved that with the planning application for the houses along the Drayton Road. Although all were against it it was still pushed through with help from the Government Inspector. It would seem that local residents have little or no influence.
I wish them luck but I fear it is yet another Pie in the Sky.Well intentioned but doomed to failure.
A good idea, but have we got the capability to deliver it? The reality is that the Town Councillors don’t seem to be able to deliver a paper bag. We are a prosperous large town with nearly full employment and we couldn’t even see the cinema project through to what looked like a promising conclusion. I’m not usually a sceptic, but there seems to be little vision witihn the council and I worry that we’ve got a load of do-gooders running things; well intentioned folk who are out of their depth in terms of actually delivering anything…..
I myself gave up a lot of time going to SARP meetings and helping put the questionnaire together. I understood that the questionnaire was submitted several times to the Vale, who kept sending it back for further modification, then it disappeared altogether, meetings ceased without explanation and nobody was even thanked for giving up their time.
The main problem, I think, was that the plan tried to tackle too much. If it had concentrated on one or two goals, such as improving the local environment and having a skate park, it might have had more chance of succeeding. If SARP came to nothing, I can’t see a plan for the whole of Abingdon succeeding.
I was in the same position as Eleanor. Spent a load of time on the survey and it then disappeared into a hole. Last time I spoke to Neil Boston (the volunteer Chair) he was very disillusioned with the Vale about it.
Well you’re the County Councillor Neil Fawcett, why don’t you do something about it?
It seems that every proposal that is lain before the Vale is either turned down or ignored, is it time those in a position of authority among the Abingdon on Thames worthy showed some mettle and stood up for the residents they purport to represent.
I can’t help having an amount of sympathy for the town council, the officers and “back room boys” work very hard for us, fun in the park, market place events, the flowers. Keeping the town clean and looking after the cemeteries are all things they do so well we’ve come to take them for granted, probably town councillors are more in tune with the residents than those of the vale and county, but the travisty happens when things like the ock St/ Marcham rd crossing they fought so hard to stop just gets overruled by occ and this steamrolling seems to be an underlying fault ? Pity then the TC doesn’t have more clout, for sure we wouldn’t have the issues we have today