St. Goran Parish Council has appointed a Group of volunteers to create a Neighbourhood Development Plan for our area. The contents of the Plan will reflect the community’s views on how our Parish should develop into the future including the location, quantity, type and design of future housing or other buildings; services such as public transport, healthcare, preservation of open spaces, neighbourhood assets etc.

Once accepted by Cornwall Council the contents of the Plan must, by law, be considered by them and, while it can neither insist upon nor forbid changes, it can significantly shape any infrastructure and planning decisions.  A fundamental principle behind an NDP is that it reflects the opinions, wishes, ambitions and desires of the community as a whole.

In order to develop the Plan its authors must engage fully with the community, conduct surveys to ascertain residents’ views and ideas and reflect those findings in the final version of the Plan. Before any Plan can be finalised and submitted to the Council we are legally required to hold a local referendum to establish if the community wish to adopt the Plan if it is accepted by the Council.

We need members of the Parish to suggest to us what questions we should include in our first survey, to draw out the views of the community as a whole.   Examples of the questions we could include in the survey are

• What is it about life in Gorran you most value?
• What changes  to the character of and life in the village would you welcome or wish to avoid?
• What additional facilities do you think we need within the village?

We can only create appropriate policies if we ask the right questions and we need you to tell us what those questions are.  We will be collecting suggestions for those questions during the rest of 2020 and conducting a households survey as soon as possible thereafter.  Look for us on the Parish website, in the Parish Magazine, on local Notice Boards and at various public consultations.

Please email your questions, thoughts and ideas to: stgoranndp2020@gmail.com or geoff.firmin1@btinternet.com

Additionally, the NDP steering group would welcome volunteer members with skills in any of the areas of Chartered Surveying, Market Research or Financial Management.