User Guide

A Guide on how to navigate the Place Shaping Consultation

Town and Parish Councils and Community Organisations

This page is dedicated to supporting Town and Parish Councils and local community organisations through the Herefordshire Local Plan 2021-2041 consultation. This is a live page and additional information will be added where it is felt helpful. 

We’ve received several requests to provide more guidance for Town and Parish Council and local community organisations to help them respond to this consultation.

We understand there is a lot to read and think about in this consultation. However, we are doing everything we can to tackle climate change and reduce the amount of pre-printing the council undertakes. Planning nationally is moving to a more digital form but we understand that this transition is not always easy for everyone and digital consultation methods will be more refined over time. 

The challenge has been to articulate complex planning context, constraints, issues and possible solutions to a very wide audience including people with no knowledge or little previous interest in planning all the way through to technical experts. 

Therefore, the consultation has been prepared with multiple readers and interests in mind. 

This consultation invites comments on potential site allocation options within Hereford and the Market Towns and potential settlement hierarchy options for the rural areas. 

Some questions require you to rank sites in order and some questions ask for a preference. 

How to Guide

We have created a simple guide on how to use our new consultation system that can be found here. 

Please:

• Share the consultation with local residents and businesses – look for the share buttons on the home page.

• Refer local residents wishing to know more about the consultation to https://hlp.commonplace.is/ 

• Use the Overview of the Local Plan tile which contains the reasons why we are reviewing the Core Strategy, the draft vision and objectives and the background studies. If they have a specific or technical question then please contact us at ldf@herefordshire.gov.uk and we will help wherever possible.

• Read the Place Specific tiles. This provides a succinct overview of the main facts, issues, options for Hereford, each of the Market Towns and the Rural Areas. 

• Find additional detail for each place contained within the Place Shaping pdf located on each place tile

• View the Place Shaping questions – these are all found on the Place Shaping Questions tile. You can choose to answer all of the questions or only those that you consider are relevant to you.

• Prepare a response to these questions and secure agreement

• When ready create an account (see how to guide) and submit the response via Commonplace.

• If you have a suggestion of an alternative site, then this can be added on our Interactive Map.  Place a pin in the location and use the comment box to add details. More detailed ‘Call for site’ information can be submitted to us by email.

• Organisations can also submit responses via letter and/or email but it requires Herefordshire Council officers to manually input responses onto the consultation system. If your organisation chooses to submit a letter, please organise comments by Place and quote the question you are responding to and if possible use the comment form. This will help officers to input your comments to the correct questions on Commonplace. Please email letters to ldf@herefordshire.gov.uk.

• If you are ever in doubt please contact our Strategic Planning Team at ldf@herefordshire.gov.uk. They are available to help you.

• We have created a simple guide on how to use our new consultation system that can be found here.