Voters have overwhelmingly backed the adoption of a neighbourhood plan for Coldean in a referendum.
The result of the referendum was announced at Hove Town Hall today (Friday 25 September) on the neighbourhood plan which is intended to encourage more family homes and limit the spread of student housing.
A 50 per cent majority was required before Brighton and Hove City Council could adopt the plan – and 374 people in Coldean voted “yes” with just 43 people voting “no”.
The turnout was 18.9 per cent of the electorate of 2,213 registered voters in Coldean and Stanmer.
Now the plan has been approved in a referendum, it is automatically adopted by the council as part of its planning policies for Coldean after a decision at a meeting of the full council in July.
The Coldean Neighbourhood Plan includes 16 policies covering housing, traffic and travel, design and crime prevention as well as open spaces, wildlife habitat protection and the environment.
Coldean Neighbourhood Planning Forum chair Patrick Lowe said that the turnout was one of the largest compared with other neighbourhood forums.
Mr Lowe said: “It’s been a long journey and what is really great is the engagement with the wider Brighton and Hove community and all the multiple groups that have participated in this plan.
“I really hope it will help our area be a lot better.”
During the five-year process, volunteers had raised more than £50,000 in cash and technical support grants to cover the costs of the work.
With the way things are going there wont be many students generally soon.
I hope that Coldean isn’t turning Reform, with the chair of this Planning Forum being a former UKiP candidate. His facts are wrong in this quote too, as there are other city planning referendums that got a higher voter turnout than this Coldean one. Hope he hasn’t been giving misinformation to Coldean locals too.
The detail was corrected after the chair contacted us. He said that the error was unintentional. To the best of my knowledge, the work of the forum has been independent of any political party.
The Forum is and always has been politically neutral. The stringent processes for producing a Neighbourhood Plan including the review by an Independent Examiner for any bias in Consultations, is key.
Will the vomment I posted yesterday about the Coldean Neighbourhood Planning Forum being politically neutral be posted please?