East Bergholt Parish Council, 13 Aug, Chairs report

10 July: Babergh DC virtual meeting for Town & Parish Councils Babergh led us
through the key elements of the creation of Babergh’s new Local Plan and the time
table. The detail of their presentation is in the slides they sent after the meeting and
included in correspondence for EBPC meeting.
The important points to note are:
I have submitted EBPC’s views for the scoping consultation, as determined at the
July EBPC meeting. I have included the point made by Cllr Price relating to our
predominance of large trees and tunnel lanes in the village.
The next point for us is Babergh’s public consultation on proposals for the plan Jan
and Feb 2027. By this time, we will have certainty on our move to new unitary
councils (final decision due Sept 2026) and can relate our plan to our new area.
There will be work for the Neighbourhood Plan Committee on working through the
detail so that a recommendation can be made to a council meeting, probably in Feb
2027. These details are likely to include recommendations on site allocations for our
Neighbourhood Plan, and thus for the Local Plan. There will be key issues for
Babergh and therefore for us which are:
– concern with the high number of new houses allocated by the government to be
built in Babergh
– concern about the Housing Land Supply figure (our policies fall away in favour of a
general presumption in favour of development if Babergh fall below a 5 year HLS)
– a question of if these new houses should be built in a new town or spread amongst
villages
– concern that Ipswich Borough Council’s current position is that they have high need
for houses and no land to develop on so they will be looking to neighbouring green
fields to take the houses. Our position might well be that they should look to brown
field sites.
There is much work to do to create our new Neighbourhood Plan with only
reasonable added development. Whereas the creation of our extended conservation
area will help us, we might also need to consider a strategic tourist policy for EB
Neighbourhood Plan to protect our local tourism economy and to conserve our
Constable landscapes.
14 July: Nigel Robert’s memorial service.
The Roberts family held a lovely and very fitting memorial service for Nigel. Thank
you to all the parish councillors and parish council staff who attended. The Roberts
family were pleased with the parish council commemoration piece for Nigel that we
have written in full into the minutes and placed in the Parish Magazine.

15 July: bi-monthly meeting with Mal Bridgeman Chair Brantham Parish Council
Brantham are well advanced in their Neighbourhood Plan developments and will be
discussing allocation of sites soon.
We discussed the potential for developing a formal South Suffolk tourism policy and
the possibility of designating this a Tourism Zone in Babergh’s Local Plan. Mal and I
will test the possibility with other neighbouring parish councils to assess interest. If
we were to develop a formal Tourism policy for our revised Neighbourhood Plan its
force would be strengthened by increasing the area to other parishes also with a
“Constable’s Country” heritage.
21 July: Conservation Area Extension
The full Babergh Council meeting passed the EB Conservation Area extension
proposal. Councillors were fulsome in their support of the proposal acknowledging
the environmental importance of our internationally famous landscape. They were
impressed by the professional expertise of the Conservation Area Assessment report
which the Parish Council and Babergh DC had jointly commissioned from Heritage
Collective ((Jody O’Reilly) and worked on together. It was described as a “gilt-edged
document”. The vote in favour was unanimous (all-parties voting).
Tribute was also made to Nigel and his professional skills and on the work he had
done to help push this project through.

Joan Miller
Chair East Bergholt Parish Council
30/7/26