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 new hall build and old hall demolition, respectively.

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.

The committee would like to announce that unfortunately, we have had to temporarily withdraw the Planning Application for the new hall. Provisional feedback from East Lothian Council raised some points that needed addressing before the application could be considered in full. This is of course very commonly the case with Planning Applications, and was fully expected. With CSY’s guidance, we were able to address many of the points raised, but some questions remained, such as the provision of suitable parking space and what is planned for the existing stone wall at the edge of the green.

With an impending deadline, CSY advised that it would be better to withdraw the application for now, rather than press ahead and be denied, which can look unfavourable on subsequent resubmissions.

 What is planned now is to prepare a ‘pre-planning’ application, including requesting an on-site meeting with both the ELC planners and Roads Department. This should allow all parties to be clearer on requirements and opportunities and allow us to then resubmit our Planning Application with much more certainty in the outcome.

It’s not the news we were hoping to be able to share with you of course, but CSY remain confident of finding a positive solution and getting us through this big step in the process.

Any updates will be shared as soon as possible!

Big news for the new village hall – final Planning drawings have been submitted to East Lothian Council!

We’ve been really close to submitting for a few weeks now, but after a last few tweaks, we are finally there. Our architects, CSY, made the submission on 6th June and you can view the full document set here.

Our application is now live on the East Lothian Planning website. ELC have split it into two applications, one for demolition of the old hall, and one for the new building. The posts are open to public comment until 1st September.

So now we have to wait! We’ve already had a few questions back regarding planting in the grounds. The committee will continue to work with CSY to answer any questions that come up from the council regarding Planning, and work towards Warrant drawings will soon be under way.

Linked below is the Design Brief that has been developed from the New Village Hall working group final summary report.

Oldhamstocks Village Hall – Design Brief

With only four remaining members, the Oldhamstocks Village Hall Redevelopment Group is of the opinion that it has reached as far as it can and that the purpose, membership and remit of any future village hall working group will need reviewed in order to make further progress, towards developing options for the new hall. The Group has therefore produced a summary report of work done to date.

OVHRG Final Summary Report November 2019

The OCA Committee Would like to thank the Oldhamstocks Village Hall Redevelopment Group for all of the hard work they have put in to progress the new hall.