The Society monitors planning applications within the conservation area and also any significant applications in the rest of the town. We have a small team of committee members who undertake this task. The details of all planning applications are available on the Borough Council’s website but we prefer to look at the more complex ones on paper. Each member of the team looks at each relevant application and makes comments to the others via email. In this way we hope to arrive at a consensus. Sometimes we will formally ‘object’ to an application but, if we do not feel very strongly, we will make comments to the planners – perhaps to show how we feel that the plans could be improved. Normally one of the team will draft a letter for the Council and our Planning Secretary will finalise and despatch it. The Council’s planners will look at our submission, alongside those from other organisations and the public. They do not always take account of our opinion, but often they do and therefore this is an important part of the Society’s activities. Our responses are available on the website for members to view.

In October 2020, the government published a White Paper on Planning. Please click here to see our response, which we sent to Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, and copied to James Wild, our MP, and Geoff Hall, head of Planning at the Borough.

Please click here to be redirected to the Borough Council webpage about conservation areas.

Please click here to view the Planning & Building Control website.  You can find the planning application by address or number.  All the plans and comments, including those from the Civic Society can then be seen and read.