Town & Parish Councils and Organisations

This page is dedicated to supporting Town and Parish Councils and local community organisations. This is a live page and additional information will be added where it is felt helpful. 

We’ve received several requests to provide more guidance for Town and Parish Council and local community organisations to help them respond to this consultation.

We understand there is a lot to read and think about in this consultation. However, we have to consider every small detail to make sure we are doing everything we can to tackle climate change and we want you to be able to give your views on all of it.

The challenge has been to articulate a complex web of context, constraints, issues and possible solutions to a wide audience that will span from no knowledge and interest in planning all the way through to technical experts. Therefore, the consultation has been prepared with multiple readers and interests in mind.  Some questions are geared towards the individual and others less so. 

This consultation is thematic and it does not ask specific questions about certain communities or settlements. This consultation invites comments on, for example, climate change and how this might be influencing your community and what planning interventions we could implement to help mitigate and adapt to change. 

The next stage (Regulation 19 - Draft Local Plan) will show the policy updates, proposed site allocations and revisions that relate to main settlements. Town and Parish Councils will no doubt feel more familiar with this but we have not reached that stage yet.

How to Guide

We have created a simple guide on how to use our new consultation system that can be found here. 

We have also set out a flow chart / list that local organisations may find helpful when coordinating its review and response. 

1. Share the consultation with local residents and businesses – look for the share buttons on the home page.
   
   
2. If you receive queries from local residents wishing to know more about the consultation then please guide them to https://issuesandoptions.commonplace.is. The introduction tile contains a FAQ and glossary which will help answer basic enquiries. If they have a specific or technical question then please advise them to contact us at local.plan@cotswold.gov.uk and we will help wherever possible.
   
   
3. Watch the introductory video to help understand the purpose of the consultation. Essentially, the consultation is to seeking your organisation’s opinion on how we should better tackle / respond to climate change in the local planning system as well identifying sites to meet government housing targets. The Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA) has reviewed various sites, some of which can proceed to the next stage of the site allocation process. Respond with these matters in mind.
   
   
4. Read the one-page topic summaries papers. This provides a succinct overview of the main facts, issues, options and questions. 
   
   
5. Review your settlement’s chapter in the SHELAA (mainly applicable to councils that have a Principal Settlement in their parish) and shortlist topics that are relevant to the Town / Parish Council (noting the map tile in commonplace contains SHELAA sites). The SHELAA is available to download on the CDC local plan evidence webpage (contained within the Local Plan Strategy drop down menu).
   
   
6. Read the topic papers that are on your shortlist. If it helps download a pdf copy of the consultation document. We have also prepared more in depth topic papers for those wanting more detail – these are available on our local plan evidence webpage (contained within the Issues and Options Consultation drop down menu).
   
   
7. Shortlist the questions (per topic) that your council or organisation wishes to respond to. A list of questions can be found at the end of each topic in the pdf version of the consultation document.
   
   
8. Prepare a response to these questions and secure agreement. 
   
   
9. When ready create an account (see how to guide) and submit the response via Commonplace. 
   
   
10. Organisations can also submit responses via letter and/or email but it requires District Council officers to manually input responses onto the consultation system. If your organisation choses to submit a letter, please organise comments by topic, insert the topic paper headings, quote the question you are responding to and if possible use the comment form. This will help officers to input your comments to the correct topic paper and questions on Commonplace. Please email letters to local.plan@cotswold.gov.uk.

 If you are ever in doubt please contact our Forward Planning Team at local.plan@cotswold.gov.uk. They are available to help you.