After five years of consultation and preparation undertaken by four successive mayors and around a hundred town councillors and citizens, the Rye Neighbourhood Plan has successfully passed the external examination stage, without the need for a public hearing, and is now ready to go to a ‘yes/no’ referendum, provisionally in late June.
If a majority of Rye electors vote ‘yes’, the plan will become a statutory document and sit alongside other planning policies to form the development plan for Rye.
The plan, which sets out the community’s vision for Rye, may be viewed at www.rother.gov.uk/Rye-Neighbourhood-Plan. Hard copies will be placed at Rye Library and Rye Town Hall.
Plan policies include allocating several larger (mostly brownfield) sites to accommodate up to 160 new homes to 2028, supporting high quality design, encouraging sustainable transport, protecting the strategic gap and green spaces, encouraging enterprise, managing flood risk and protecting key community facilities.
The chairman of the Rye Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group and Rye mayor, Michael Boyd commented:
“Neighbourhood plans enable communities to protect valued spaces, have more say over the location and nature of future development, influence building design, manage change and retain more of the money paid by developers towards infrastructure improvements. Please let us know what you think of the Rye Plan by voting in the upcoming referendum.”
Image Credits: Rye Neighbourhood Plan .
Congratulations to all those who have played a part in getting the Plan to this stage …… the 5 years will have felt like 50 at times! Hopefully, the townspeople will turn out in droves to vote because they will then be able to say that their voices counted, finally!
I’m only sorry that I won’t be able to vote – Icklesham is ‘another country’ ….