Issue - meetings

(A)     That the draft Harlow and Gilston Garden Town Stewardship Charter be approved for consultation

The Leader of the Council presented the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town – Draft Stewardship for Consultation report. He stressed that the document was a draft and a generic strategic document that set out six high level principles for stewardship. He said that the document should help to ensure that the council gets the unique and specific solutions right for the Garden Town. He said that the consultation would run for a minimum of eight weeks and a draft would be circulated to all Garden Town community groups and relevant Town and Parish Councils.

Councillor Buckmaster asked the Leader for the Council for assurance that if stewardship arrangements could be separated, that they would be. He accepted that there were strong similarities between the draft stewardship and the Places for People draft but there were other garden town work streams that could have a bearing on the document. He asked for reassurance that the responsibility for managing a wide range of assets like parks, play areas, allotments and community centres would remain solely in the Gilston town. He said if the responsibility went outside the area, it would challenge the principle of community ownership.

The Garden Town Lead Officer said that the draft document was trying to achieve a set of high-level principles that established good practice to be applied across the Garden Town and it did not seek to constrain Gilston in any way. He advised Members to keep an open mind when it came to what the best solutions were. He said the Garden Town was seeking to achieve delivery of 60% of transport by active healthy modes and residents in the new developments were likely to want to access facilities in Harlow so this would need to be developed in partnership with other organisations.

Councillor Buckmaster said he understood about the transport issue but said some partners would want control over the green spaces.

Councillor Dunlop said he did not understand why East Herts needed to be a part of the partnership at all. He felt the council should set the charter as it sees fits and questioned why it was being done at this stage before any s106 agreements had been signed. He said that Gilston was part of East Herts and felt there was a pull towards Harlow.

The Garden Town Lead Officer gave some history to the Garden Town and said that the concept came together over the life of the District Plan which resulted in the allocation of 10,000 homes. He said the council worked with partners as the planning strategy needed to be considered beyond the district boundaries. He said that the council worked with Harlow and Epping Forest Councils to support the delivery of growth. He said that there were significant benefits of working in partnership and Gilston had local involvement and commitment.

The Garden Town Lead Officer explained that the draft stewardship had been put together now to provide some overarching principles and the detail would follow later. He said  ...  view the full minutes text for item 94