During the AGM this month all committee members were re-elected. The chairman also provided his report on progress made this year. The forum has been collecting further evidence needed for the neighbourhood plan, such as design guidelines for new development in Whitburn.  We have started translating the evidence into draft policies. To ensure that these policies are fit for purpose, the Forum will enlist the support of a consultant to produce a draft report. We are hoping this draft will be ready in October. The draft report (called a pre-submission plan) will be consulted on, allowing the local authority, statutory consultees (e.g. Natural England, Environment Agency, Historic England) and of course residents to express their views. This will likely lead to further amendments to the plan before a final version can be submitted. See the picture below for an indicative timeline and the steps the plan will need to go through before it can be adopted.

The Forum requested consultants AECOM to develop design guidelines for the neighbourhood area, to be used within the neighbourhood plan. These guidelines have now been finalised and you can view them here (13MB).

The aim of the guidelines is to guide future housing development in Whitburn, to make sure that it is appropriate in terms of scale, design and character and to preserve the existing quality of place in Whitburn.

The guidelines will be translated into a specific design policy in the neighbourhood plan, which developers will have to follow. 

It is a really interesting read that looks at all the different building styles in Whitburn and discusses why Whitburn is such a unique village, so have a look!

This year's AGM is planned for Friday 7 June at 7.30pm.
The venue is the Barnes Institute, in the upstairs room.
​Further agenda and details to follow. 

For ease and to keep our name consistent online, we have changed the website URL to whitburnforum.co.uk. We have also changed our email address to whitburnforum@gmail.com. You can still use the old addresses (whitburnnf) for now, because they will automatically be forwarded to the new ones.

We have also changed the look by adding some beautiful pictures of Whitburn taken by John Short to the header. 

We have uploaded all our newsletters to the documents page in case anyone did not receive them in the past, or if anyone would like to read them again.

Let us know your thoughts on the new website. Is there anything that our website is missing that we should add?

After our successful workshop last week, we have put together all your comments on how you envision the future of the Whitburn Lodge. We are now asking you to vote on three different options for the site to take forward to the council and the owners, in order to see if we can develop a neighbourhood development order. Go to this page for further explanation.

The Forum has put together feedback from consultation events and the evidence we have gathered on various topics to write a first draft of policies for the neighbourhood plan. These policies will become the rules any future development will have to follow once the neighbourhood plan is in place. Work is still ongoing, but please do get in touch with your comments. You can read the draft policies here.

Our latest Visions & Objectives for Whitburn Village is now available to view on our google drive. The links to each of the four pages can be found on the "Minutes & Documents" section of this website.

Note that this is a mandatory element of the Neighbourhood Planning process and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

The next forum meeting will be held at 7:15pm, upstairs in the Barnes Institute on the 9th of March 2018.

One special guest for this meeting is one of the Whitburn Lodge Owners !

We look forward to seeing you all there.

The WNF is holding two workshops to discuss the main themes from the recent public consultation. The first is on Saturday the 11th of November at 10am in the Barnes Institute. The second is on Friday the 17th of November at 7pm in the Barnes Institute.

Volunteers are needed. Please get in touch if you would like to support.

Good Evening WNF

The final published report that looks at the heritage and character of Whitburn village is now available for viewing. The document can be found either on our documents page or by following the link: ​https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9is22EefU_zaVVwZEpmSTh5RkE