Have your say on local planning

If youv’e been following the birth of the Neighbourhood Development Forum, then you’ll know that the next step is to start putting together the actual plan. This is a document that will, unlike Camden’s Place Shaping document, have actual statutory powers. It must, however, be coherent will all other planning frameworks, which is basically a posh way of saying that it can’t be anti-development.

If you were at the Jester Festival, you may have seen the NDF stall, where chair James Earl was asking people to say what they thought of various developments and buildings. When I swung by on Sunday afternoon it was noticeable that views were very mixed. Such diversity is good, I would argue, but it also means that if you don’t take an active role in helping to shape West Hampstead’s future, then you risk leaving it to people with diametrically opposed views to your own.

To this end, can I suggest you fill in this survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BQNWN5B about the area, and have a think about what to say in the open questions section so that when the plan is being devised it can truly reflect the viewpoints of the community and not just the few people who always fill in such forms.