Neighbourhood Plan Questionnaire

As many of you are aware, we are in the process of creating a Neighbourhood Plan for Houghton. This must accurately reflect the views of those who live in the village. We are therefore seeking your views by asking you to complete the Questionnaire which will be delivered to you during the period 15th to 31st January 2016. Those under the age of 18 will be given the opportunity to express their views by completing a Young People's Questionnaire delivered together with the main Questionnaire.

Your input to the process via the Questionnaire is extremely important. Clearly we need to be fully aware of your views so that we can incorporate them in the Neighbourhood Plan. Less well known, but equally important to the process, is that we have to be able to demonstrate to external assessors that the plan is based on a valid and comprehensive evidence base, which will be provided by the responses to the Questionnaire. I am sure that you will appreciate therefore that it is critically important that we have a tremendous return of completed Questionnaires. Please do help us to achieve this.

We will be following the procedure which proved to be so successful for the broadband survey, with the questionnaires being distributed by a volunteer local to your home, then collected a week or so later. This process enabled the broadband survey to gain a response rate of around 90%. We are hoping for the same sort of rate for the NP Questionnaire. As with the broadband survey, the Questionnaire will not be available to complete on-line.

The Questionnaire asks how you think Houghton should change over the next decade and beyond. If you find difficulty with this, or just want to know more of the background, we will be holding aninformation session on Saturday 23rd January 2016 in the Village Hall Club Room, from 10 am to 2 pm. Members of the working party will be present to discuss any issues connected with the Questionnaire and the plan. They are only there to clarify any factual questions you may have about the Questionnaire itself or background information. They will not attempt to help you fill in the answers, or to influence your responses. We need your independent opinions.

Analysis of the responses to the Neighbourhood Plan Questionnaires are available to view by clicking on the following link: