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!