Town Plan published
The Town Plan 2008 (right) is available. It
can be downloaded here. The recommendations (which are included
in the main report) can also be downloaded without the remainder
of the report if preferred:
Printed A4 copies may be obtained from the Town Hall, Library, Bridgend Centre or the Discovery Centre .
A public meeting (22nd July 2008) provided wide support for the
plan and it has now been published with the support of Bollington
Town Council, Macclesfield Borough Council and Cheshire County
Council. This support now comes from Cheshire East Council.
A parking study was carried out in September
2007 and this resulted in recommendation in the Town Plan. Proposals
for changes and restrictions have now been made and a public
consultation has been held. The proposed changes to parking
restrictions throughout the main streets of the town are progressing
through the legal requirements and will be implemented in October
2009.
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We congratulate the founding chairman of the Town Plan group, Professor
Michael Burdekin, FRS FICE FREng CEng FIStructE FIMechE
FWeldL, Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester,
who was awarded an OBE in the 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours
for services to Nuclear Safety (he is a Professor of Civil & Structural
Engineering).
Many of us believe that the citation should also have recognised his services to the Kings School, Macclesfield, where he has been a Governor for 25 years and is presently Chairman of Governors, and for his services to Bollington, particularly in respect of his leadership in the development and implementation of the Parish and Town Plans.
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New chairman for Town Plan Group
Paul Gibbons is the new chairman of the Town Plan Group. Paul
is strongly involved in the community as the Chairman of Bollington
United Football Club and has been very successful in helping to
drive the Club forward. He is a quantity surveyor by training
and has his own firm based in Tytherington.
Town Plan Group Chairman stands
down
Michael Burdeken was chairman of the Town Plan Group
from its inception in the early days of the decade stood down from
31st July 2009.
He most successfully brought the
group through the development and publication of two editions
of the plan and contributed great personal effort in getting these
plans accepted by the various councils including Bollington Town
Council, Macclesfield Borough Council, Cheshire County Council,
and, latterly, Cheshire East Council.
In addition he has pressed the implementation of the recommendations
by the various councils and other bodies, and published regular
updates on implementation progress.
The story so far ...
In 2003 Bollington developed a Parish Plan under the Government's scheme for returning the development of communities to the people who live in them. This was a once in a generation opportunity to tell the planners and politicians what we, the people of Bollington, wanted the town to become in the next couple of decades.
The Parish Plan was completed in December 2004; it was the first by any community in the Macclesfield borough. In early 2005 the plan was adopted by Bollington Town Council, Macclesfield Borough Council and Cheshire County Council. In the intervening three years work has progressed under the capable guidance of Michael Burdekin to implement as many as possible of the recommendations made by the plan.
We expect to update the plan every three to four years as necessary. It is now called the Town Plan. Bollington is a town and not a village, and the word parish sometimes causes confusion in that people expect it to refer to the church. Our town plan scopes itself to Bollington the town.
Information on the first plan is available on another page.
Who are 'we'?
I keep saying 'we'; who are 'we'? We are a committee of individuals, all volunteers, who responded to the call to come and support the drafting of a Parish Plan. The call went out in 2003 and about twenty townsfolk attended an introductory meeting. It is important to appreciate that this group were, and continue to be, independent of the town council. However, this did/does not preclude town councillors from being members of the group and, in fact, several councillors have contributed significantly to the exercise. The leader of the Parish Plan group is always someone other than a town councillor. For the first four years the leader has been Professor Michael Burdekin. The review during autumn 2007 was chaired by Cllr Sandra Edwards in her role as councillor responsible on behalf of the Town Council for seeing that the Parish Plan was implemented.
The Town Plan group
The review meetings held during the autumn of 2007 went through the previous plan and considered the progress made in implementation of the recommendations. The review group also decided that the whole plan should be reviewed and updated to establish a new Town Plan with a new set of recommendations. It was expected that the new plan would cover some of the same ground as previously but also pay more attention to aspects that were not fully considered in the first plan.
The surviving members of the previous group were joined at a meeting on 26 November 2007 by a number of invited individuals who the group considered should be involved with the new plan.
It is important to emphasise that membership of the Town Plan group was open to everyone - anyone could join the group at any time.
The updated Town Plan was duly published in September 2008.
