Herefordshire Council have started consulting on the Hereford Area Plan (HAP) and the Hereford Transport Package (HTP). Some of you may have seen the newspaper advertisments and visited the displays at the Courtyard last week. If you did not then the good news is that there is still time. The exhibition has moved to the Hereford Library and will be there until 19th of May. Council officers will be there on Wednesday afternoons to answer questions we understand.
It is really important that those of us living to the west of the city have a significant effect on the proposals so please consider looking at the displays and, perhaps, even more importantly completing the questionnaire so that Herefordshire Council knows your views.
In brief; the Hereford Area Plan will provide the detail behind the Hereford city policies contained in the 2015 Core Strategy/Local Plan. In particular this includes the proposed western bypass and housing growth, both of these will have major impacts on Breinton if they go ahead. The Plan does not physically cover our parish – our Neighbourhood Development Plan + the Core Strategy + the National Planning Framework do that – but the Plan does have major implications for all the parishes that surround the city including ours. Having viewed the displays and read the consultation materials I don’t think that anywhere near enough attention has been paid so far to the impact of the city’s planned growth on areas like Breinton.
The Hereford Transport Package deals with improving movement in the city (and surrounding areas) north of the River Wye. The earlier South Wye Package deals with the area to the south of the River and includes the Southern Link Road between the Ross and Abergavenny main roads. If this finally gets funded then it will end at Clehongar and point a possible western bypass directly across the River Wye through Breinton. However the funding of the South Wye Package is still being argued about.
The HTP is where you can find out most about the proposed bypass.
If you cannot visit the Library displays then most of the material is available on the Herefordshire website along with a questionnaire. As usual our advice is 1) only answer the questions that you feel are relevant and 2) if the questions do not ask about the things you feel are important then put down your views any way. The links to the consultation material are below.
Hereford Transport Plan documents
Unfortunately if you go the Herefordshire Council’s website their front page only takes you to the questionnaire. You can search the site of course for all the background information which we feel it is really important to read before answering giving your views. So we hope that you will find the link above a helpful short cut
The Parish Council thinks that the results of these two consultations will have such a fundamental impact on the future of Breinton that we are planning a public meeting to go through the proposals in detail and discuss them with you. The proposed date is Saturday 6th May and the meeting will be in the village hall between 10.30 and 2.30. More details will follow.
So please look at the material and consider responding to the consultation. Also please come to the public meeting. You may want to wait until after the meeting before replying to Herefordshire Council