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Make sure you have your say on the future of Dacorum, with a six-week-long consultation on our Revised Draft Local Plan ending on Monday (11 December 2023).

You can help to decide the plan and direction for Dacorum, with your comments playing a big part in determining how our borough will look until 2040. The consultation is taking place online, until 11.59pm on Monday, through our new interactive engagement platform, Let’s Talk Dacorum, and by post, while our Local Plan team has also been talking to residents at in-person events across the borough.

If you are a resident of Dacorum, have a business based here, or are a regular visitor to one of our towns and villages, please give us your views in the consultation on our Revised Strategy for Growth, which will strongly influence the creation of the new Dacorum Local Plan 2024-2040.

Our borough is already a great place to live for people of all ages, and a proven location for national and international business. This consultation is about you, and about making sure that Dacorum continues to become an even better place to live and grow up, as well as thriving as a hub for business and industry.

The Local Plan will lay out the strategy for delivering new homes, jobs and investment across the borough. It will plan for important infrastructure - such as schools, transport and health facilities - set our approach to protecting and providing parks and green spaces, and the way in which we respond to the challenges of climate change. It will also provide the policies to be considered when decisions are made on planning applications.

The ongoing consultation is a vital and fundamental next step in determining the amount and location of new development in Dacorum over the next 16 years within our new Local Plan, which plays a pivotal role in setting out our approach to:

• Identifying where and when development should take place
• Delivering a step change in housing growth
• Supporting the local economy, employment and retail
• Constantly adapting to, and mitigating, the effects of a changing climate
• Promoting high-quality design of development
• Conserving and enhancing the historic and natural environment
• Enabling the delivery of critical infrastructure.

Once the consultation period has ended, we will closely consider all of your feedback and then prepare a summary Consultation Report for spring 2024. A pre-submission version of the Local Plan will be published in October 2024, in time for formal submission by mid 2025.

Cllr Sheron Wilkie, our Portfolio Holder for Place, said: “I’d encourage as many people as possible to have their say in the consultation, as every comment will be valuable and could have an impact on the final Local Plan for 2024 to 2040.

“Once again, I’d like to thank everyone that has provided their views so far. We would like to hear from our residents, businesses based in the borough and visitors to Dacorum on what they think, and how we can make improvements to benefit people for many years to come.”