Minutes of the SPECIAL MEETING OF LYTCHETT MATRAVERS PARISH COUNCIL

Held on Thursday 26th May 2016 at 7:00 in the Methodist Church, Lytchett Matravers.

PRESENT were Cllrs M Colvey, R Carswell, A Huggins, J Taylor, E Wilson, Alan Cottman, .

Dist Cllr W Meaden. No members of the public were present.

1. REceipt of apologies for absence – Cllrs Norris, Wood, Bush, Webb and Parish Clerk.

2. CHAIRMAN’S ANNOUNCEMENTS. Statement that this meeting was called as a special meeting regarding any action the Parish Council and/or District Councillor Meaden felt it needed to take regarding the PDC Partial Review of the Local plan and its implications to Lytchett Matravers, especially following the meeting on Weds 25th May which 4 LMPC councillors attended, where the combined view of representatives across the PDC region were discussed. It was also stated that, for the purposes of this topic, District Cllr Meaden should be allowed to take full part in interractive discussion throughout the meeting.

3. DECLARATIONS OF PECUNIARY INTEREST; AND CONSIDERATION OF REQUESTS FOR SPECIAL DISPENSATIONS UNDER SECTION 33 OF THE LOCALISM ACT 2011. There were none.

4. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION SESSION. No members of the public were present.

5. REVIEW OF PURBECK OPEN MEETING DATED 25 MAY 2015

Cllr Huggins provided a resume of the meeting attended the previous evening at Studland Village hall, and attended by representatives from about 8 parishes throughout PDC region (including Studland, Langton Matravers, Worth Matravers, Upton, Church Knowle, Lytchett Matravers and others) with approximately 24 attendees in total. The meeting was called and lead by Peter Bowyer of Studland.

The meeting took the format of 1 ¼ hours of representatives expressing their views issues such as the Overall Purbeck total No of houses proposed, the allocations for their parishes, the combinations of Affordable housing vs market value, the lack of proposals for allocations in certain towns/villages (eg Swanage seems to have its own Town Plan). There were also discussion about support from the relevant MPs, whether we could gain support from local “celebrities”. There was a call for PDC meetings to be recorded and published on Youtube and the need for increased publicity to make PDC more accountable to the Public for the decisions being made. It was noted that we would like to work on this in a united way rather then each parish protecting its own patch, at the necessary expense of someone else.

After a break and an opportunity to record particular concerns by sticking post-it notes on a number of A3 sheets around the room under certain headings, we then agreed to form a steering group to take this forward. Peter Bowyer will chair this group, and our Cllr John Taylor agreed to join the group to assist with Publicity.

The 4 key areas the group will look to address will be:

1) Challenge the overall PDC allocation 3080 homes.

2) Challenge the allocation for the parishes and towns, and the method by which this allocation is made – provide allocation which is more in line with the requirements of the Parish.

3) Publicity and impact – consider getting local celebrities “on board”. UNESCO ?. We want to Preserve the long term viability of Purbecks.

4) Lack of confidence in PDC – seem to be doing that they are told by Govt and not fighting it hard enough.

The group asked if parishes could decide whether they wished to endorse this group as representing their Parish.

  1. DISCUSSION OF LMPC STANCE ON THE PROPOSALS AND REQUIRED INPUT FROM DISTRICT CLLR MEADEN.

We discussed and voted to support the Purbeck Working Group (Proposed by Cllr Colvey).

There are different proposals for developments which would directly affect Lytchett Matravers: the least being 90 houses, the most being 330 houses, or a new village centering on Bere Farm between Wareham Road and Foxhills lane with 600 houses.

There was a general feeling of concern to the impact on the already busy exit route from the village via Wareham road if Bere farm is developed whereas other smaller developments will spread the traffic exiting the village. Also impact on Lyrtchett Matravers services for residents of new village coming to use resources in Lytchett Matravers, even though there would be proposals to provide its own infrastructure. Cllr Meaden reported that people generally accept development better if they have assurance of improved infrastructure. However, as the Bere Farm development is technically in Lytchett Minster, not Matravers, we will not necessarily directly gain from CIL/Section 106/Council Tax Precept.

We agreed that at this stage we do not support any of the specific development proposals affecting Lytchett Matravers until the working group has completed its work in hopefully reducing the total Nos and the allocation for us.

We also agreed that, via District Cllr, we should ask what amount of infrastructure improvement income we can expect, but that we should not product a “wish list” as a) our wishlist is in the Neighbourhood Plan, and b) depending on how many houses we end up building will determine the amount of money we get and this the number of projects that can be supported.

7. MATTERS OF INTEREST AND INFORMATION, CORRESPONDENCE

None

The meeting closed at 21:00

Annotated by/on …………………………….. Signed by……………………

Full Council “Special meeting” minutes 26th May 2016