The Hawkhurst NDP Steering Group thank all who took the time to come to the Visioning Event on 14 January. 

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Well over 200 people engaged in a busy and energetic discussion on the issues that affect our village. 

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We gathered over 400 comments from people and around 6,000 “scores”- these give us an impressive indication of your priorities. In fact, we got so much information it's taking us a while to work through it!

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This is our opportunity to give you some initial feedback on the Event and on next steps.

 

You can see below the 10 issues that people gave the highest priority to:

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Issue                                                                          % Priority

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1. Congestion at Highgate crossroads                         72.61%

2. Healthcare facilities                                                 68.12%

3. Loss of agricultural  landscape & woodland            67.83%

4. Sewage & Drainage                                                 67.39%

5. Protection of views                                                  67.25%

6. Wildlife sites                                                            66.81%

7. Access to rural countryside                                     66.38%

8. Green gaps between settlements                           65.65%

9. Individual trees & woodland sites                           65.22%

10. HGV traffic                                                            63.77%

 

We will be reflecting this in our ongoing work, but we won’t be concentrating exclusively on the top 10, as the other issues are also important and deserve full consideration.

 

We are very grateful to the many people who volunteered to join our Working Groups on particular themes.

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Our next steps are:

 

• Producing a formal output report with all of the data collected at the Visioning Event - this will be made fully available for residents to download, hopefully by May.

 

• Issuing a public timetable to illustrate how the NDP will emerge during 2023 - this has become complicated as Tunbridge Wells Borough Council Submitted Local Plan is taking a slightly different route (arising from the formal examination and the inspectors' feedback to the Council). This is likely to delay our NDP work.

 

• Contacting volunteers for the working groups and giving an indication of how & when they will start on their work.

 

Please bear with us while we make these preparations.

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All information on these next steps will be posted here on our website and also on our Facebook page.

 

If you have any comments on this Feedback Statement, please email us below: