South Leigh

We have taken the agreed next step in the possible application for Conservation Area status.

The Heritage Consultant, Graham Keevill, toured all the village on 13th April 2021 walking and being driven around from Tar Wood to High Cogges and everywhere in between. He was accompanied at various times by Graham Soame, Dick Pears, Martin Spurrier and Gary Nicholls.

After meetings and adjustments, his final report will be received shortly by the Conservation Area sub-committee and this will be presented to the Parish Council at its meeting in July. If the Parish Council approves it, it has been agreed that it will be disseminated to the village and a decision will be taken by the Parish Council, based on a final consultative poll of the village, whether to make an application to West Oxfordshire District Council for Conservation Area Status.

Dick Pears, June 2021

After the Parish Council Poll on 1st December 2020 when 64% of the voters decided (with 27% disagreeing and 8% being undecided) (the figures have been rounded) that “the Campaign Group should prepare a draft application for Conservation Area status (with options, e.g. boundaries etc.) for the Parish of South Leigh including High Cogges, for consideration by the Parish Council and Parish residents and to be voted on by residents in due course”, the following initial steps have been taken:

Heritage Consultant
The Campaign Group had a meeting by zoom on 23rd January 2021 between Graham Keevill (GK), a Heritage Consultant, and Gary Nicholls, Martin Spurrier and Dick Pears. Graham Soame had been invited to attend as a PC representative but could not do so but was sent a formal note of the meeting.

There was a summary given to GK of where the village was at and the detailed and extensive prior consultation that there had already been with meetings, fact sheets distributed and the poll on 1st December 2020.

Conservation Area / Neighbourhood Plan?
One of main points of this initial meeting with GK was to ask whether there were advantages in having a conservation order in addition to a Neighbourhood Plan. He said it was sensible to have both if you could and that the advantages of a conservation order over a Neighbourhood Plan were threefold:

1. A conservation order gives 'statutory’ protection whereas a Neighbourhood Plan is 'advisory’.
2. A Neighbourhood Plan is time-limited whereas a conservation order is permanent.
3. A Neighbourhood Plan can be interpreted at the whim of a local authority whereas that is not true of a conservation order.

Costs
We had established in earlier email exchanges that GK’s overall costs would be about £2000 + VAT and in subsequent discussions between the three of us on the Campaign Group we thought we should allow a contingency amount of £3000 + VAT to include all the potential costs to be on the safe side.

It may be that we will be able to claim back the VAT.

Next Steps
We asked GK to take us through the process and he suggested that he would like a “walk round the village” with him being supplied with all the material that had already been collected. Martin agreed to do that and get it to him. We suggested March/April for the walk round when lockdown restrictions might have been lifted. The cost of that first stage (consideration of documentation and walk round) would be about £600 + VAT. Informal fund raising has now taken place and there are funds in place for that stage - independent of Parish Council resources.

There was also discussion about which areas of the Parish might be included and the themes of that discussion were (1) the application should be inclusive rather than divisive and (2) the landowners needed to be protected, if that were possible.

Thereafter the process would involve GK writing a draft report which he thought would take him only about 3-4 weeks.

Martin Spurrier, February 2021