 Hey everybody, welcome to you all and I'm just going to stop square and share my screen and show you all of our faces. I think you can see them already. And so welcome along to our first session of this consultation. Welcome back for those who have previously been along to some of these webinars and for different different pieces of work that we've been doing and welcome to all of the people who haven't. It's lovely to have you here, but now we're today to talk through the forthcoming consultation or the consultation that's live now for the grace came to local plan. And this is a bit of an introduction to the plan. It's a little bit about how to comment how to get involved and and some of the dates and some of the events that we're going to be doing. We've got a team here today, some of the panel to talk to you about different things. I'm going to try and make it a little bit interactive. We've got some new technology. So I say we're going to try out this time. So bear with us. As always, we'd like to try a few new things to make it a little bit less of us just talking at you and you guys are being involved. And what I'm going to do is I am going to just run through our panel and introduce them to you first, and then we'll do a little bit of housekeeping and then we'll crack on so I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to introduce the one by one. And Hannah. Hi, everyone, I'm Hannah Loftus. I'm engagement and communications lead at the shared planning service and being working on putting all of this consultation process together with the team. Thank you, Hannah. And thanks for being here. Mark. Hello, all I'm Mark D's I'm a senior planning policy officer with the share planning service. Thank you, Mark. And my ride. Hi, I'm Maria Sonovan. I'm also a senior planning policy officer with the shared service. Thank you, my ride. And John. Hello, I'm John Dickson the planning policy manager. Hey, John. And behind the scenes, I'm going to introduce the two, we've got two of our colleagues behind the scenes running all the technology and without this, without them, this wouldn't be working. So we've got Will Smith and Tim Cliff who are running the technology so we can either be thankful that they get it all right or we can blame them if it'll go wrong. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. And so for me, I'm Paul Fray now I'm assistant director for strategy economy. So part of the team who helped me to prepare the plan. So about the session, just to reassure us being recorded. And there isn't any chat facility on here but there is a Q&A and what we'd encourage you to do is put any questions into the Q&A as we go through slides and we go through the the interactive sessions, and we'll try and answer as many as we can as we go through, but we will have some time at the end hopefully 15, 20 minutes to do some questions and answers as well. And I think that you can post anonymously or I think you can use your name, we're trying not to mention names. So without further ado, I'm going to share my screen, we've got a few slides to present to you just on the stage of where we are at at the moment and I'm going to hand over to John Dixon who's going to start walking through those slides with you now. I'll actually just before we do that I'm just going to outline the sessions. So just to outline what we're going to do we're going to have a little bit of about what the stage of the plan making we're at. And then I'm going to do a little session on plan making demystification for those of you who don't know what plan is about and that's going to be interactive and then we're going to talk a little bit about consultation, how to participate and and outline some of the next sessions including further webinars and some about in real life sessions as well. So John, I'm going to hand over to you and you can start. So, as a reminder of where we are in this process this isn't very much not the beginning of the process we started plan making was far back as 2019 I think we started. You might remember in early 2020, we did our first conversation and we held many events just like this one. And we generated an awful lot for feedback over eight and a half thousand comments. All of which have been published on our website you can find all the information. So since then published and further research on the plan so back in November. Last year we published a series of studies that we've done to inform the plan and some of the testing we've done on the choices that will be available to the plan. And since then we've been working up what the first proposals for the plan should be for this consultation. After we'd worked those uppers as officers clearly they then go through a democratic process. We went through, I think at least four meetings with counselors who discussed agreed made changes scrutinize the documents to agree them for consultation that's now started. And we're now just into the six week consultation we're carrying out. Just an early reminder of where we are this is not the final plan. This is very much the proposals we would use to develop the plan before we then consult you on it. Next year. So what you can see at the bottom of the screen is our overall timeline, which shows we would consult next year on the draft plan. So that would then lead to a plan that we would want to submit for adoption so our final plan that we want to adopt. And then that would then be sent off to the Secretary of State and there'll be an independent examination with an independent planning inspector to scrutinize the plan and listen to all the representations that come in at that point. Before a report would come to us. As to whether the plan is sound we can go on to adopt we've got more on this later in the presentation I think. And so what does it do hopefully you may have the chance to already look on our website and have a look at the consultation for yourselves but it tries to set out the vision and the aims for our plan. What do we think this area should look like over the next 20 30 years and how should we guide what that should look like through our proposals in the plan. It sets out the overall amount of development we should plan for in the period of 2041 so that's the number of homes, number of jobs but also infrastructure should go with those. It sets out where we think that development should take place and clearly seek your views on those proposals, but also the key policies that would drive how that development take place what what should be like what standard should it meet for example. Again it's not a full plan you will see when you look at that consultation it sets out what we propose to prepare, not full detailed policy wording and site details that we would have in a final plan. The other thing to point out is that all the evidence we've used to help us prepare this plan is available on the website there are many studies and topic papers where we've tried providing great detail. The background to this proposal it's not just our proposal is why and the evidence behind them so you have that available, should you choose to comment as well. I'll come back to Paul. Thanks very much john and I'm just going to come off the screen share now, and we're going to move to what we're going to try is a little bit of an interactive session just to get you thinking really about about the plan and try and help you. So we're out so I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try this now. And let's hope we're going to be using something called mentor and now mentor me to some of you who've used it before it's fairly simple we think to to use I've managed to get through it myself to put this together so we'll have a go at it anyway. And so if you can see my screen now, and you can do a number of ways you can either go to www.menti.com type in the code. And it will take you to the page or you can use this qr qr code you can see now, and hopefully you can all see that. So what we're going to do is I'm going to move to the first question on mentor meter, and which is this. So, for everybody and hopefully what in you start putting your answers up you should be able to see them come on on the screen. So, in three words, what do you think that a local plan actually plans for so you can see our little diagram on the side there that's part of our infographics. So we think this is what this is what we're trying to plan for this all goes into the local plan and I appreciate that lots of you have seen some of the documents already and there is a lot of stuff in there already. A lot of information, a lot of evidence, a lot of, a lot of wording. So what are the things that we're thinking about just copy the ones on the side on the tree. So some new homes, not seeing a huge amount coming through employment. Yeah, absolutely. I think employment and homes are obviously really, really key. And growth is an interesting word because obviously growth means lots of different things, you know, population growth requires new development, new housing. And we need to you know we need to plan for the future for the future nourishes to ensure that they have got houses and they've got places to work and, you know, new homes to live in. And the last place is definitely and as you'll see from some of our documentation, you know, great places is one of the key themes of this plan. You know, biodiversity and green spaces, another key area. And I think one of the really big topics that we're really, you know, battling with with this plan that's maybe been slightly different from previous plans is climate change. And we know that this is a significant issue for everybody. I mean, and planning has got a huge role to play in that. And, you know, it's not the only tool that we're going to use to solve some of these complex challenges but it certainly is very much one of them and it's really been at the heart of what we're trying to put into the plan. Some really good stuff coming here yet transport homes, green spaces, anti discrimination. It's a really good one. And I think one of the things for us that we've really tried to be thinking about in this plan is how that we try and, as we've got in this in this slide is demystify the process of planning so actually we can get people involved and get people to understand that it's kind of dry, boring stuff. John will found at me about, you know, putting houses in places but actually it's really about placemaking and it's really, you know, it's a really, you know, to try and plan in uncertainty that we have in, you know, in our times at the moment it's really tricky but actually we have to do that job and we have to do as well as we can but what we really need to do is try and get as many people involved in the process as possible. And a little bit later when we're talking about why it's so important to get involved in the consultation and to put your thoughts in and to try and get involved. And there are things that, you know, are really important that the communities can engage with in the placemaking process even though some things aren't something to engage with. So, some other ones in their history, history is a really, a really important one as well because we build, you know, plans are an iterative process, you know, each plan we've got currently got to adopted plans to South Cambridge, South Cambridge City and we're going to try and build on those as well and, you know, we don't want to throw out good stuff we want to improve on on that and move it forward. So, it's really important that we have lots of diversity, there's some great stuff coming through here. It's really interesting that one of them has come up is making developers money and that's actually quite important because we do need to make sure development becomes to his viable. But a key role of the plan is to make sure that it seeks contributions from development towards the infrastructure needs, the open spaces, the transport that needs that are generated by those developments and that's actually a key role of the plan to set out what those needs are, what those costs are, and the funding that should come from development so everybody knows up front what the expectations of developers are to help them bring forward developments also communities know what will come with development, not just the housing but that we will be supported. I think it's really interesting to see transport really central here, because actually transport is one thing that the local plan doesn't actually plan for itself. We take account of transport plans, but it isn't the transport plan which is something that I think is planned as we do struggle with I think, you know we have a system that we work within and transport sits at the level of different areas and in our area we've actually got a lot of different levels of local authorities that have transport roles so we have the combined authority at the macro level we have the county council sort of in between and we also have the great Cambridge and they'll be consulting on some really important transport proposals starting I believe on Monday now in actual fact. So we, we work really closely with those transport authorities, but we aren't the transport planners ourselves. We have to try and make sure that our plan meshes with those other local transport plans as seamlessly as possible. But it's actually something we can't plan for in this plan. I agree with that. And so some fantastic stuff coming through and just to let you know obviously that the, you know, the, you know, the stuff that you're putting in here we will capture that we are capturing all of this stuff and we're trying to get inside because actually, we're even going to try and build in some, you know conversations that are going to feed into the next webinars and the next session so we can actually consider a lot of this stuff and part of the process of consultation is listening to this and hearing some voices in different ways. So I'm going to move on to the next one now so we have got another, another slide for you to interact with and I want to get you thinking and so this is the next one. So this is always a question that we get asked quite a lot and gets a lot of a lot of questions around it so who do you think and who does everybody think who does one think that gets to decide if a local plan should be adopted or not and you know there's a wide range of people who are involved in making and and examining and viewing local plans. You know, but I've given you a few options that I mean if there are other options that you think might be in there you can always put that into the Q&A. So we've got a couple there already coming through from the planning inspector and just to just to give you some context of who you think these people are the officers who write the plan is essentially us and all the people in front of you now so we've got some of our plan policy planning team John and Maureen and Mark and and all of us who are involved in making the planning inspector in government a part of MHCLG and they inspect plans that's correct. And our elected council members and you've got to remember that we have a little complicated system here because we work to councils so we've got lots of elected members so both councils and both council processes and they made the decisions on behalf of the council. We've got one thing that developers decide the plan as well. So, coming to at the moment. So, I think this is a bit of a trick question but I think you've got it right and broadly mostly been voted and it is, it is decided to be adopted by elected members I mean we will draft the plan and we will make sure that the plan is drafted on our evidence base and consultation and the process in which, you know, we have been going through for the last 18 months and continue to go through for the next 18 months. When we have a plan that we believe is the, you know, as John described in the previous slides as the final final submission that we've got to I think that will be in two years time. So, we will then submit that to the Secretary of State and the planning inspector who will, who will examine that to find if it's sound, and if such that it is found sound and it's examined and found to be sound and is deliverable then we will then take that through our council processes and the elected members would then decide whether that plan was adopted or not. Absolutely and then and you'll all be pleased to know isn't the developers who decide the plan or adopt it and that's something certainly that doesn't happen. And so moving on to the final slide before we get back into funeral sessions. This is an interactive but it's something we really wanted you to think about. And as we go through this consultation and feedback to us and you know you'll have details how to contact us how to give us comments how to you know feedback informally as well. But a really important thing is to think about when we're, that we always try to ask ourselves a question we're always asking ourselves as we, as we're trying to drive this and actually it's really helpful to kind of, you know, tell you what we think is good for us to hear from you is what you think makes a good local plan and you've said some good really interesting comments in the first slide. But when you're responding to the consultation it'd be really helpful for us to understand what you guys think is making a good local plan because there are some things that it's required to do from a statutory perspective. But there are also lots of things that it could do or it could talk to that are really important from your perspective unless we know those things, we can't try and integrate them into the plan. And so, yeah, if you can think about that while you're, while you're commenting and that'd be really, really useful. So I'm going to come out of this now thanks for that interaction I hopefully that did work. Okay. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to move back over into into just our view, I think this is a bit more of a dry technical view. What is kind of legally considered a statutory sound local plan. I'm going to pass it to John who's going to, who's going to, who's going to, who's going to talk you through that. And John, I'm just going to share my screen on that slide and hopefully you should all be able to see it and John you can talk us through this. There are the technical word eat slide about what a plan's got to achieve before it's considered sound so sound is the word that's used in national government guidance as to what an adoptable plan must be if it's suitable, ready to go does what it needs to do. And that is then defined in national planning policy about what sound means with those four criteria. So that planning inspector mentioned we mentioned on the earlier slide. That's one of their core roles to see if the plan is sound and the plan can be moved on to be adopted by the councils. So the first test of sound is, is it positively prepared. And in summary that means does it respond to the needs of the area or the issues facing the area. Positively does it does it meet those needs. And in some cases, does it also even meet the needs of surrounding areas that couldn't meet their own needs. So these are really two so part of the process we have to very much talk to our neighbors and understand what the issues facing surrounding areas well as well are not just our own areas to demonstrate with positively responded to the challenges and issues and opportunities facing our area. So it needs to be able to justify what's in the plan so is it an appropriate strategy that responds to those issues and opportunities that I've just mentioned. Have we considered the alternatives that are available to us and the choices that were available to us through plan making a part of that is demonstrating that through a proportionate evidence base. So we've got a document library with publishers part of the consultation which documents, all the evidence base we've prepared up to this point to show what's behind our thinking at the moment and it is extensive we do live in a complex part of the world. We've got to deal with a range of very challenging issues. So you'll find a very extensive number of documents already in our evidence list and that will keep growing as we go through the process. The next test we have to pass is is the plan effective. Have we demonstrated that the policy proposals and sites we put in the plan will deliver to meet the needs we've identified. Is it effective in working with partners on the strategic issues we've identified through the area. Have we demonstrated that we work properly with our. Major government bodies in the area environment agency for example have we worked effectively with them through the process and we demonstrate that through something complicated call a statement of common ground which is effectively just a statement show we will agree or don't agree how we've worked together. The very important one of the end is, is it consistent with national policy so the government publishes what's called a national planning policy framework supported by other guidance, which sets out what they expect plans across the country to be achieving. Some high level planning policies that would apply to all developments and they set out what they expect local plans to do. And we need to demonstrate how we've responded to that that policy guidance appropriately with our plan and our inspector will almost be guided by those requirements in in testing the plan as well. So one of the things we do when we get further than the line is to document how we've responded to national policy almost line by line or paragraph by paragraph or at least to show we have effectively responded to government policy. So we need to effectively pass all these tests and show the inspector at the end of the process that we've done this. So in responding to comments something would recommend to people responding to do is have these in minds when we get to those more formal stages of the plan making process like down the line the specials will want to know from people making comments. Well, which sounds test do you think the plan hasn't achieved or which has it achieved if you support in the plan so these do become important further than the line we're getting to the most more technical phases but it doesn't mean they're not useful now to have in mind when you're making comments at this stage. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Thanks very much. Yeah, really, really useful to consider those and as usual joining done an excellent job of explaining some incredibly complex stuff and in good simple terms. It's always the battle so I'm going to hand over to Hannah now it's going to talk a little bit about why, why you want to get involved and why people would like to get involved and bearing in mind this is recorded. And if there's people who haven't been able to make it today you think might be interested in this please do share the link to the webinar which will put it up and you know try and get people to get involved, and especially those people who might not necessarily think it's relevant to them. And so I'll pass over to Hannah. Thanks, I was just going to start off actually by talking about some of the overarching principles that govern the way that we look at consultation. Thank you if you're nerds like me will be familiar with what's known as the gunning principles and these are actually a series of principles that were established about consultation through actually a court case where a case is brought to say that a public authority have done what was felt to be by the complainant proper consultation. And it was actually really interesting because it was the first time that anyone had been asked what makes a consultation what actually is consultation what makes a legitimate consultation and and the QC who was presiding over the case even said Lee. I wanted to talk in these four principles that these are what makes a consultation a kind of reasonable consultation a consultation that is meaningful. So firstly that the consultation must take place when the proposals are still a formative stage so you can actually, you know they're not set in stone whatever it is that you're consulting on changes can be made. We must put forward enough reasons for the people who are being consulted to actually respond with the with enough information so you can't just be asked kind of questions say well do you like this or that and the other and have no background or no information for you to be able to understand those proposals. Thirdly adequate time for consideration and response so if you know there's no point in consulting on something and then a week later coming out with the final plans clearly you haven't given enough time for those consultation responses to be bought about. And fourthly that the product of the consultation must be conscientiously taken into account and I think for us this is really important that what you tell us gets pulled over in a huge amount of detail and we think about it very very seriously. And that's really important as important as what we hear from everybody is what we do with the information that you give us how we consider that. Next slide please. So some of the things that we really value from what we get from consultation and engagement. So firstly really it is that insight that you bring us so we really need to know and we we need that information that only you have that's a really valuable part of the insight that we bring to the plan. You know things about your local area that we aren't necessarily going to be able to know or through the sort of more technical documentation that granular nature of particular aspects of locality might not come through. But you also know things like what you do on a daily basis where you go how you travel, what would or wouldn't incentivize you to do things differently maybe in the future, how you make decisions about your life. And again, when you're commenting on the consultation, we really value that insight that you bring so please tell us those things that we can't find out any other way we look on work with the environment agency we work with highways we work with a lot of technical agencies but that's not the same as that insight into the citizens that make up our community. Again then, building on that insight, you know that insight is in a way part of evidence, but there's other evidence that you may hold that can help us either prove or disprove the hypothesis that we come with because what we're trying to do here is really test our thinking. So we've used the evidence that we have that's available to us the advice of various experts to help come up with these proposals. But if you have some evidence that you think is material that you think might actually change that then please bring it to the table. There might be some data if you work with an organization that collects data of some sort that might be really helpful. That could be some reports or some other things that we might not be aware of, you know, we've talked about the role of local history and how some of that information is really valuable. There are limits to how much we have been able to, you know, we only have a team of certain people to be able to do to bring on that and so if there's information that you know there's buried in an archive somewhere that we might not have realized please bring that to the table and that's really helpful. The next one. Then testing it so a plan is a tool is a tool for us as planners to try and get the best possible outcomes for our area. And like any toolbox it's got a lot of different aspects to it. And we want to know whether they're really going to work and that's working for all the different users of the plan because the plan is used by regular citizens as something that you can consult that you can see what those policies say and they can help inform anything that you choose to do with your buildings, anything from a house extension through to as a farmer or as someone with with a big land holding what you choose to do. So you can tell us whether you think those policies are actually going to work whether they're going to achieve the aims we hope them to achieve. And you can also just tell us whether you think you understand the plan is it clear enough. Is it something that people are going to be able to unambiguously use and interpret. It's really important to us, we want it to be as simple to understand as it can be we know we can't avoid all of the technical jargon, but you know fundamentally if it's got ambiguities or it's got things that are not clear. It's not going to be as effective as it should be, in terms of being that tool to create great places and to create a great environment for you going forward. Next one. So yeah, I mean, this is just a little bit of an example of kind of improvement we're trying to do things like for instance use more digital mapping. Use better maps better graphics that are better more explanatory help people understand what we're doing so please feedback, it is a tool and we want to know how we can improve it. But improve on what our last level plans have done to make this one a more streamlined or effective part of the planning system. Next. So and then the last is, you know, obviously this question of opinion, do you like it. But I think it's really important to stress that consultation is not a referendum and it's interesting to see some some questions in the chat or some comments in the chat here about who gets to decide and the role of the citizen. Planning is a process of making really difficult trade offs between different priorities and different aspects of the world that we live in. So consultation is a referendum, thankfully, probably for many of us I think we might have had enough of them for a bit. And it is about justifying and understanding why you have the views that you have about parts of the plan. So when you do comment, please let us know why you think what you think not just what you think but actually why because that's that insight that helps us to understand how to make the plan better how to make it fit with your priorities. What do we need to adjust how do we need to adjust it in order to make it as robust and to balance those trade offs as best as we possibly can. So it's really important to tell us please what you like as well as what you don't like so you may like some policy ideas and not others you may think some sites are appropriate and not others. It's just as important to tell us the bits that you think we should keep and hold on to, as well as the bits you think we should chuck out and start all over again on. So I think when I'd really just like to sort of end by saying, you know, it really matters what you say, but it is definitely the reasons behind it that insight that we're really seeking from you. So I'll just take the opportunity to answer a few of the of the questions I can see in the chat that deal with some of this question around consultation because it is really interesting. And one of the one of the questions that is about good consultation, allowing for the kind of none of the above. And I think that is a really good point to be raised and we absolutely welcome comments that kind of are none of the above. And when we ask you to comment on it, there's, in both the different forms of comments that you can leave. There is space for you to do that we do welcome alternative proposals that you might come up with. Please do tell us about them. They are really important when not just it's not a multiple choice answer it's not saying you know you must choose this that or the other. There's not space to say no, you know what, I don't think that any of these things are right, but here are some other ideas about how to do it. Question about how views are taken into account and I think we're going to come on to a little bit about what we do after the consultation, aren't we Paul in a few other slides so I'll probably answer that afterwards. And some of the questions I think unfortunately I can't see the questions that I was on one new sharing my slides, but yeah I mean we're hopefully some of them will be answered in the second part of the session and we'll pick them up. And thanks very much Hannah and yeah and we totally all concur it's really important to get involved I mean we have tried really hard to try and make it as understandable as possible but I'm sure you know you'll understand that the amount of work that goes into this in detail we can't do any less. And apologies for the amount of evidence that's been gathered really it's really important that we do that too. So, I know that you're super excited about this next file game. And I'm going to come up with my screen share again, and I'm going to go to another very short interactive session, which I hope that you'll, you know you're like just as much as I think you like the first one. We move on to, you know, to more formal questions. And, and it just is a little bit picking up about how how to think about feedback and how you might think about that in a way that's helpful for both, you know, for both you and us and how we can take that into consideration so hopefully you can see my screen again. I'm really sorry that we've got two mentees it's a different code this time so you will have to go into a different code or scan that scan that QR code again. And I apologize about that that's just our naivety on mentee at the moment and we'll be working on getting that better for next time. So, this time, first question is, is just thinking about comments and just kind of building on what Hannah was saying, really. And, you know, what do you think makes a helpful comment and you know the talking about the why you think about stuff why is it important for you to make that comment. And I think this is something that you know we can kind of take other examples from in other parts of our lives, you know we don't just comment and feedback on planning and actually, you know, actually planning has the least feedback on it apart from other things and we get a lot more, a lot more energy but maybe they don't, you know, we're not as good at presenting it in a way so, you know, yes, context is, is absolutely one that is specific to, you know, it's specific to many things but planning is is is is important in that fact, saying no to something is pointless without stating an alternative yeah. That is true and like I think that others have said, you know, this is not an easy thing to do, everybody involved in making plans has to consider is it's pretty much touches everything that the people do and it's looking into the future which we know is inherently difficult at any time that especially in 2021. Clear reasoning constructive feedback is really important, you know, and planning is quite a divisive topic, you know, we know it is, you know, we're all working it, you know, we all understand it but most of people working in planning, certainly in my experience are people who, you know, care genuinely care about making places better for people and constructively that's helpful we're not always going to agree but, you know, being able to communicate that and then feed into the plan or feedback why we haven't been able to feed into the plan is a really important part of that two way process and anyone anyone else on there pick out any other bits Hannah or others that you think are interesting that coming through. My evidence is great that that's coming through. Yeah, and I think that maybe scroll down because I know someone put one in the chat which I put in for them which I thought was really nice always I did type of it. Sorry, fairness, honesty, courtesy, rationality, fact and relevance but that was a really great answer and I think, you know, that's the kind of nature of the debate that we really hope to have is that ability to kind of disagree with each other in a way that is also has that courtesy for sure. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that I mean backed up by evidence and I think that, you know, a lot of the stuff that we see around in the media and in general the in just in the times that we live in is very much, you know, it's quite polarizing some some respects and what we've tried to do and you know planning is a process that really works for the basis of the most current and up to date evidence or facts as much as possible. And it's, you know, it's fine to challenge those but actually, you know, doing it in a kind of honest and and Curtis ways really important based on logical. It's great to see that evidence is coming through so strongly there and you know that's something obviously that the policy planners here on on on the call and those also working in our team obviously that's their, their life living in in evidence based work, you know, a lot of policy isn't written particularly evidence based the planning policy absolutely is because it's so examined at the end of the process and has to has to be so so really helpful comments and I'd be really fantastic to capture these actually as we as we feed and you know feed them back into the plan these are really interesting. Okay I'm going to move on to the second one now everybody thank you for sharing I think it's been really good to use women to meet and find joins that she's really good. It's really good to see people engaging. So just a bit more broad, a bit more of a broad question to you all and this is kind of help us iterate I mean you'll know that we've been trying to bring forward a digital plan this one is moving forward to that process but you know that includes kind of the way that people like to engage with stuff now so we're really interested in how you like to leave feedback. And that just doesn't mean in terms of how you feedback on this consultation, but you know any kind of feedback how do you do this all with stuff, you know, I mean we've all had pretty horrific experiences are pretty good experiences, quick kinds of good and simple I mean, I've had a recently had a really really bad experience with it with an application something and leaving feedback, but also equally sometimes I think wow that was so super simple. They've really got that right they've really designed that well they've really got the user design right on that and then it's really helpful and I can see how that's worked. And I think that that's why we've tried to kind of mixed up with the way that we've consulted and, and, you know, I know that there's some some conversation around the way having to kind of two forms of consultation and has going to talk about the kind of detailed comments and the quick survey that we're going to do in a little while. But actually, you know we want to give a broad range of people because not everyone's got the same preferences but we want to try and reach as many people as possible and take those into consideration and so I think that we do need to have a swathe, a broad swathe of ways to do that, and anything else in there anyone else picked up anything from the panel on there that they're thinking unstructured. This is interesting because you get so much. This is one of the things that you know we constantly trying to work out how we really, how we get that breadth and richness of information that you get in unstructured comments, you know, and also then get the quantitative stuff as well because there's a real mix there and I think that that's a really important that Hannah this is really your up your street but there was your views on that. I think we actually really welcome unstructured comments as well as structured comments. And there's a couple of reasons for that and I think this is really learning from how human beings work, but even if you ask people to be structured sometimes they can be structured anyway. So half the time, you know, in I think previous sort of more traditional formats, trying to sort of get people to be too structured can just lead to just almost as much work as just allowing people to be unstructured in the first place. And so that I think you know and this is something we will come on to is that we want as many comments as possible. So having tools and ways that we can analyze them relatively easily is really important for us. It's interesting to see online coming through actually pretty centrally here, because it makes it a much easier process if we do have things online for simple fact that when they're not, we have to manually transcribe them into the database that we use to do that analysis. And it's, you know, we're trying to learn from a lot of new tools here and we're trying to learn from a lot of other disciplines, other social research techniques, other analysis techniques which are quantitative so involving numbers but also kind of qualitative sentiment analysis and things like that. And it is a constantly evolving field but we do try to find the right ways to allow people to do things and make it as easy as possible. I think that's really interesting to see that coming through like the fact that people want to do it simply, quickly, not expensive, concisely those all really resonate with us. I think it was clicked possible. That's such a massive aim of us is to literally have a few clicks possible. And so forth. And I think that that's the, yeah, absolutely. And actually some of the stuff that goes on behind that the use of kind of research work is really important to tiny things with this few clicks. Certainly some different skillsets coming to play here. So thank you very much again for all of your comments on on that and I'm going to hand out just before we go to questions we're just going to have a quick, a quick run through, I think, before we go to the panel and some questions on just how how you can get involved in this plan now and Hannah, before I just share that green, I'm going to hand back over to you and then somebody else can give a vlog. Let's see, are we up and we are. Thank you. So, yeah. Firstly, how can you explore the proposal? Well, you've already found us here today so you've definitely managed that in some way or other. There's an online and offline method as well so there are hard copies at local libraries and also actually at the two council offices although they are only still open by appointment only. And then we've worked quite hard to try and revamp our digital plan and our interactive mapping as well and we really do welcome all feedback on this as well so please do let us know what you think. So we're hoping to try and make that relatively intuitive. So, for instance, if you click on something on the interactive map, it will bring up. Actually, I wonder if I could always do a little demo of this now. I'm sorry, I'm springing this on Paul who works say no, don't we didn't do this in our practice. I just wonder whether I could just do a little demonstration to show people how that works because I think it's great. Sorry, so to speak for the team but Tim actually use on the doing technical behind the scenes today has worked really, really hard on this without me okay Paul if I just shared my screen. Of course if it's helpful for people to say. Because I can just literally talk show you how that works as a, as an experience so if you go to the interactive map webpage, you'll get up this map. So this shows the, all the site proposals and also the strategic green space projects that we propose in the area. And if you click on a point on the map. Just say here, it will bring you up a little window like this and if you click on the window on the on the arrow, it will bring you up a whole bunch of useful information about that site. And, you know, we've actually managed to link it up to digital plan this is really exciting I mean it sounds like baby steps but with, you know, this is all kind of an improvement on what we've had before so if you click on more information. I'll take you straight through to the digital plan where you can read the whole of the kind of policy direction for that particular site or initiative. So, just simple things like that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen board so you can go back to your proper slides but we're trying to make it as easy as possible for you to explore that information go back prison forwards from from the mapping to the written document and vice versa. And then we have a number of different ways that you can comment as well so. Yeah, if you go to the one before maybe. Oh, sorry. Yeah, next one. I think I've got a lag on my, my thing. So, yeah, if you go to our local plan web page that map is embedded there you can also use the view the map link to view that kind of full screen. So the digital plan takes you to the full digital plan document, and then we have two basic ways to comment so we have a really quick survey, and then we have a more detailed comment facility for people who want to go into greater depth and so forth. The reason we have those tunings is because we have such a diverse range of people who want to comment. So everybody from just regular people, normal members of the public, young people, old people, residents, people who might work in the area students through to our formal formal community so they might be our parish councils they might be our neighbouring local authorities. Historic England, the environment agency. There's a lot of bodies who also get kind of involved with commenting on a plan who aren't just people and all of their views are really important and valuable and of course then there are landowners, developers, agents, professionals of different sorts who also want to put in their comments. So it's important that we do kind of cater for everyone as much as we can. Next piece. So the quick questionnaire. This is anonymous. We're at a relatively early stage in plan making so we're still at regulation 18. And that means that we can do this so this is really designed you know it'll take 30 seconds on your mobile phone it's a very very quick questionnaire. And if you come to one of our in person events or if you go to a library you'll find a hard copy version of that as well, which you can just fill in and leave there at the library they're collecting them for us or if you're an event just give it to one of us. And that really focuses on the larger issues and the major sites of the plan obviously it's not possible in 1213 questions to cover all 400 pages of the plan so we've tried to focus on the bits where we think people will have the most to say and be most interested. Then the next way of commenting is the more detailed comment facility so that's I think shown on the next page. So at the end of each page on the digital plan. You can see there's a little speech bubble and if you click on that speech bubble, you'll bring up a box to start logging in and leaving your detailed comments. So that does require us you to log in and register and the reason for that is because this is really aimed at those, if you like, more detailed technical answers that people may have so for instance if you're a parish council and you're commenting on a site. It's actually quite important that we can track that response back to you as a parish council because you come with a particular role in the process and a particular perspective and if we want to follow up on your questions. We obviously need to know that it's you that's put them in and how to get hold of you and so forth. So we would encourage people to use whichever way they think is best. We do are asking people to respond online if at all possible. And because it does make our life a lot more consistent. If you send us free for answers by email. We have to transcribe them into the system to ensure that we analyze them alongside all of the other comments. We have to then try to assign them to the specific bits of the plan we think you're commenting on. Read them and say, well, we think this comment is relevant to climate change, but maybe this person actually means this comment in the context of some other bits of the plan and it is quite complicated for us to do that analysis. And it helps us interpret your comments correctly if they are left against the right page or the right policy in the plan. It really does help a lot. Now I'm really aware that we've got we're getting to the end of time so I'm going to just skip to a few of the questions that are in the chat which relate to this question about how we comment and so forth. So someone has said I like to leave for feedback by email at whatever length is needed to make the points and to receive feedback on the content of the and also via email with a paper trail. That's a really great point and I think we love we want to get that thoughtful feedback. Last consultation however we did get about eight and a half thousand comments so it isn't possible for us to comment back to each person individually about the answer that they give. However we do publish our consultation statement and the consultation statement does tell you how every comment has been taken into account. It's a group so when comments raise a similar issue that it's an issues based analysis, but if you read the consultation statement which is open on its published on our website as well. You can see how your comments are taken into account. And that is essentially that sort of paper trail that you're asking for about how that feedback that you've given is taken into account. So the question which was a little earlier that says, Why do we think that people generally don't feel that they're listened to or their views are taken into account despite the consultation process. That's a brilliant question as well and we really acknowledge that that can seem like the case a lot of the time. And I think this is where this question about what you comment on and how you comment. And so forth you bring to us really matters because we have to create a plan that has drawn out why it's sound when it gets to that examination stage. We can show that it's really well evidenced and that it's kind of incontrovertible as far as possible. We couldn't really put forward a plan and the justification being well someone just said they didn't like this so we didn't put it in. But unfortunately that's just not going to be enough evidence for us. So this is where I think the views are really taken into account. For instance, it really helped us to know from the first conversation consultation that we held early 2020 what people thought about climate change what people thought was really important about that. It really helped us kind of push that up the agenda in terms of the plan, you know that people thought it was a top priority makes us bolder and rave about how we take that forward. So that's an example of consultation responses really counting you know for instance if that had been the other way around if people had said climate change, you know, we just don't think it's a big priority. We know that government is asking us to deal with climate change it's not like we can't deal with it as an issue but maybe we wouldn't be as confident about sort of being a bit more envelope pushing about how we deal with climate change as a result. I don't see any other consultation response related questions up here. I mean, back at the early stage when we were talking about who decides on a plan as really interesting ones about the electorate making the decision. And residents should decide who is if a plan is adopted so in a neighborhood plan that is kind of the way it works in the neighborhood plan you get a neighborhood referendum. The name who does get to vote on that for a local plan that's just not the system we work in, and people may have different views on whether that's correct or not. But we are loading plan is sadly can't change that system from central government that says that it's not the electric that makes decision and I suppose the rationale there is sometimes we have to make really difficult decisions for the greater of the country the planet, lots of other factors that may not always be popular. You know, we've got to be honest about that we know that it's not always popular. And, and, you know, we know that it can be really difficult sometimes to get those things on a very local level may feel, feel hard to swallow, even though potentially for the longer term or the future generations that might be really important. And that brings me on to the last consultation related question I can see, which is about canvassing the views of people most likely to benefit from new development by the next generation and people outside the region and I think this is a really great point to raise because we are actually trying really hard to get those views to reach beyond the kind of people who normally respond to consultations you have plenty of time on their hands. Because this is a 20 year plan actually almost a 30 year plan on many levels and the NPPF requires us to look forward 30 years. So this is a plan for Gen Z. This is not a plan really for even people like me who are in our 40s here. It is a plan for people who are growing up at the moment. So we're trying to work very hard in fact I spent yesterday evening with youth club groups in part of our area, talking to those very people about what they hope for fear for in their future, what makes good place for them to live, what kind of housing they're interested in living in in the future, really interesting conversations and we really welcome any opportunities or any ideas that people have or any groups that people would like us to go talk to within our capacity to do that we are prioritising young people actually this consultation in a really major way. So yeah, but we're trying hard it isn't easy always to get get that feedback and get that input but we're really trying to do that and to sort of raise that their voices up the agenda. I think that's me done for those questions unless you can see this. No thanks for thanks very much and I think what we'll, if people are happy to stay on we'll run over a couple of minutes because there are a lot of questions really keen to kind of answer them and I'm not sure how we're running this this time in terms of the ones we don't get to in time, I will amalgamate them and I'm sure that some of them will be either FAQs that we can point to or something that we can add to our FAQ section on the website and if we don't actually get to those questions in time. Before we do go I'll bring up the slide again just to show you how to get in contact and who to get in contact with and what the best way of doing that is and that I'm going to run through a couple of the questions as well now. And as I'm trying to get some of the other panel involved we are we have tried to answer as many as we can going through and Tennessee this is the first session so specific comments on specific kind of parts of the plan. We should be able to pick them up in the in the in the other sessions we've got two sessions next week, one in terms of exploring the development numbers and the jobs and homes and one about the strategy and then one on climate change the following week and the following week after that we've got biodiversity and green spaces. And so question I think I'm going to hand over to you, John to answer is, how can we be confident you've included everything relevant in the local plan and on your map. John. Sorry, could you say that again for I couldn't hear you. Sorry, and I can't hear you. I will come. So how can you be, how can we be confident you've included everything relevant in the local plan and on your map. That's a great question. So, we very much try, as you say we've been working on this plan for 18 months or more. And we start off very much from trying to scope the plan so what should it cover. And we use the early stages of consultation to try and help us identify all the issues that we need to be covering that's another reason why the representations were really helpful. So we've tried to scope in issues raised through consultations issues were required to look at through national planning guidance and other local issues, issues that other local organizations or bodies say we should cover. But it's very much the opportunity in this consultation just say if you believe something's been missed. So that's why we asked at this early stage and we want to hear before we get to that stage of actually writing the plans one of the real aims of this part. I think this question, maybe relates to a few other questions I see about the way to support treatment plant site relocation, which I know is an issue that many people are concerned about so for those who aren't aware. This is the proposal for manganese water to relocate the Cambridge waste water treatment plant from the current site in northeast Cambridge to a new site near Honolulu and Fendicton. I think maybe it would just help for us to cover off a few of those questions now because there are a number in the chat at once that relate to each other. And I think there is a question about why we don't show that on our local plan maps and what information is in the local plan documentation about the relocation project. So we understand absolutely where this question comes from because in the minds of the public and understand we say you may think these things are intrinsically linked and we should show them on that. However, the waste water treatment plant is not part of the local plan it is a completely separate planning process because it's a nationally significant infrastructure project. So its process is not decided through the local plan or indeed it is not decided by us as local authorities either it is a development consent order process that goes through to central government. So it is similar to other large projects in the area for instance East West Rail, which we also don't show on the local map because those are projects that are outside of. And this comes to this thing about what does a plan plan for unfortunately, though, unfortunately from your perspective maybe is the question of it from the system that we're in we don't plan for those so if we show them on our map where do we stop we then start showing all sorts of other proposals from all sorts of other people or parties that may or may not come to fruition in the fullness of time, and so forth. We simply can't show them on our map otherwise that's the trap we fall into. But we do acknowledge that there's a relationship between the proposals at North East Cambridge and the waste water treatment plant relocation and that is considered in the sustainability appraisal of the local plan. So it is not that we don't have some, you know, have mindfulness to some of those wider impacts and wider questions, but they can't be because it is not a planned project plan proposal. They cannot be put on our map in the same way as the other proposals that are actually policy proposals in the plan. And I know that we have a frequently asked question on our website about this as well so if anybody wants to read more about the relationship between those two. Then please do visit our website and go to the frequently asked questions page and I will be more information for you there. Absolutely Hannah and that's picked up a couple of questions in there. We've got one here about planning land use over a reasonable horizon say 100 years, and the impact on the environment over that period and I think it's really interesting. You know, you know we find it very difficult to plan over a couple of months with most of our lives with the uncertainty goes on and planning yet has to take into consideration quite a long term piece and especially with climate. And, you know, John or Mark you would you would you talk to that that comment. Yeah, it's a difficult one in the way that we want to plan for a reasonable length of time but the further you get ahead. More uncertainty you have in that longer term period so it's about finding that balance and the 20 year plan, we think actually the government in their guidance thinks it's around the right sort of timeline as well 15 years also is about the right length of time when you can plan for that level of certainty. We don't just stop there we do look further ahead about the longer timeline that's another issue the government is highly so looking at slightly longer term so we're trying to look in more detail that 1520 period but have an eye to the longer term because that's the most effective period to plan for. Thanks very much Sean and I mean there's a lot of questions in here that'll probably get discussed in some of the later webinars as well I think we've got through quite a few, but actually a lot of the detail and the technical detail certainly around, you know the housing numbers and the way that we've looked at growth it's going to be picked up next week. I've got a question a couple of questions around consultation and just, and our own experiences about because this is something that's, you know, this obviously this session is for that to kind of ask the questions about how we consult and one of the things that we've been asked in advance really is, is why we've chosen the places that we've gone to do the locations on what I'm going to do quickly is I'm going to bring up another slide just to show you where we're going in terms of the places we're going in real life. And we'll just talk over those quickly. And Mark, just going to come to you. Why is it we've chosen some of the places that we've chosen to do obviously we've got the five webinars but we're also doing quite a lot of, quite a lot of other places. So we've just checked up the list of some of the sites that we intended in real real life. Right, thanks for what you see there's quite a lot of activity there. The dropping events have been located to try and be fairly close to major proposals in the local plan. So we're close to places like the Cambridge Biomed Campus with the event we're having at Clay Farm. And so on. So if you look there, I think we're doing about six or seven dropping events and I think I'll be at all bar one so I would encourage anyone who's near to one of those to consider popping in. I don't want to be stuck in a village hall on my own for three or four hours. Please come and talk to me and we'll do some consultation in the old fashioned way. Mark and I'm going to just pop up the last slide which shows you some further details of how you can get involved while we just walk through a couple more questions. And why I think that we try to encourage people is to go through the website and go through using the hashtag as much as possible. And, you know, we also get comments about how, you know, being as inclusive as possible. And I think we've had one in the chat. I don't think that we think that we've tried to expand it as much as we can. We aren't reaching everybody and it's a really, it's a real focus of all of us to try and to try and really improve that but I think one of the key things is to explain to people why we don't really engage with this process why it's relevant to them and I think people, you know, certainly the younger age groups as well, who this plan is going to fundamentally affect and also play a massive role in dealing with some of the challenges that it brings along. You know, they don't really understand it so much so I think, you know, you can help us as well those who have been here today, and those who have been involved in the process before by spreading the word. Before we leave, and I know we've gone over for five minutes, is there any final thoughts for the panel on this? Please do get in contact with us as well, but is there any final thoughts from any of you? It's been a really great discussion and lots of really great questions. And we would definitely just encourage you to come to some of the, we see a few questions that aren't answered, we haven't had time to answer today. I think one of the reasons I thought hasn't answered them is they are, a lot of those going to be covered in this growth and jobs and homes webinar that we're having next week so if you're able to come, please do come to that. And also there's lots and lots of information on our website and I would just encourage everyone to kind of have a look and explore that content. And if there are questions that aren't answered there, we will be adding them to the frequently asked questions section. So if something that you've asked today isn't broadly speaking covered in the FAQs, we are picking up all of those and we will add them to the frequently asked questions on our website. So do you have a quick look there? I think what might be useful as well, Hannah, is I think there's only about six questions in the Q&A at the moment. We'll take those questions and bring them into the webinar for us next week as you know, and there'll be similar questions I'm sure of that so we can then pick them up. Regarding Northeast Cambridge, we do have a dedicated webinar on that as well. So that's towards the end of the month. We've got a dedicated Northeast Cambridge and local plan of online events. So if anyone is interested in exploring that in more detail, do just have a look at that details again on our website. Okay, well, great. Well, listen, I'm sorry that we've run over by seven minutes, but you know, we do want to get all of that information. It's great to have so much engagement already at the first starting point. I can see the numbers have dropped now to 27. So the 27 of you still here. Thank you for being here. And thank you for attending and thank you for engaging and and your feedback is always valued. So have a lovely day. Have an enjoy your weekend and thanks to the panel as well. And then we'll see you something next week. Hopefully.