After a lot of time and effort spent, OCA are very happy to announce that the village hall Planning Application has been revamped and resubmitted!

You may already be aware that OCA took the disappointing decision to withdraw our previous Planning Application after some points were raised by East Lothian Council, which needed addressing in detail before our application was likely to proceed. We went back to the drawing boards with CSY, our architects, and went through a formal “pre-Planning Application” with ELC. This gave us a chance to get as clear an idea as possible of what ELC would like to see in a revised plan for our village hall.

Lots of iterations and a Local Place Plan later, and we now have our modified design committed to (electronic) paper. The changes are minor, in that the form and function of the design we all voted on is essentially unchanged. The hall now sits just over a metre further back behind the village green wall; and improved car parking, including an accessible parking space and footpath to the hall, are now formalised in the plans.

You can read the whole (now much more extensive!) document set here. The ELC Planning Application numbers are 24/00747/P and 24/00748/CAC for the hall and conservation area, respectively. The applications are not up on the web portal yet, but should be in the coming days.

Our Pre Planning Application for the new hall has now been submitted to East Lothian Council. As per the advice from our architects, we recently withdrew the original Planning Application, in order to give ourselves time to resolve some of the issues that were raised by ELC. The two main points were the provision of sufficient parking, and amount of the existing stone wall that was proposed to be taken down (even though the material was to be reused).

OCA would like to be clear that although this Pre Planning Application is an official process with ELC, the general purpose of such applications is to facilitate a detailed conversion with the council, allowing applicants to get some feedback on what is likely to be accepted or not, but without any final commitment to the submitted drawings. As such, the plans we are sharing here (although identical to our original submission in most details!) do not officially represent definite design choices at this point.

Despite this, we wanted to share the submission with the community, as it does represent a big positive step forward!

The documents that CSY have drawn up for this are considerably more extensive than the last submission. You can download and read the entire pack here. The major changes are those pictured in this post: the addition of a parking area and potential EV charging points near the church, and the reconstruction of a larger length of stone wall to the west of the new hall – (K) in the image below, and also (J), where the stone is now used in the construction of the front steps. Much more has also been included on the heritage and conservation status of the village, which will be important in ensuring parking solutions are sympathetic to the green and the village.

The next steps are to wait for written feedback from ELC and to organise a site meeting with a council representative. Both are expected in January. CSY feel sure that this will help us overcome any remaining issues and get us back to a full Planning Application.

As always, questions or comments are welcome. Please email info@oldhamstocks.org.uk.