East Cliff & Springbourne Neighbourhood Forum and Area Designation Consultation

(Please note this consultation was undertaken on our old digital engagement platform - for transparency we have copied the text as shown below)

Neighbourhood Forums work with local communities to prepare Neighbourhood Plans for their area and forum designations last for five years.

On 26 January 2025, a proposed new neighbourhood planning group applied to BCP Council to be designated as a neighbourhood forum, to operate as a qualifying body for the purposes of preparing a Neighbourhood Plan, in accordance with s61F Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and s8 Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012.

Neighbourhood forums must be able to demonstrate that they have a written constitution to describe the basic framework of the organisation including its purpose, membership rules and election of officers. The neighbourhood planning legislation and regulations state that Forums must have at least 21 members who are individuals, either living, working within the area of the neighbourhood forum, or are elected members of the authority concerned.

The proposed East Cliff & Springbourne Forum submitted an application to be designated as a neighbourhood forum within a defined area boundary.

Please note: We also ran a consultation on the East Cliff Neighbourhood Forum application whose neighbourhood boundary overlaps with the part of the proposed East Cliff and Springbourne Neighbourhood Forum area. To ensure transparency, both consultations ran at the same time to provide an opportunity for representations to be made on both applications. Only one neighbourhood forum could be designated for one area, therefore we asked respondents to review both applications before making their representations.

The information submitted to the council comprised of:

• A covering letter received by email on 26 January 2025
• A combined application form for neighbourhood forum and area designation including a list of 23 stakeholders
• A map of the East Cliff & Springbourne Neighbourhood area boundary
• A written Constitution of the proposed neighbourhood forum and membership details
• A Statement of Mission and Vision setting out how the forum is established for the purpose of promoting or improving the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of the area, incorporating requirements contained in section 61F(5) Schedule 9 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Please note that if the neighbourhood forum’s status is approved by the council, no other organisation may be designated as a neighbourhood forum for the purposes of the Localism Act 2011 and the Neighbourhood Planning Regulations 2012 for that neighbourhood area until the designation expires or is withdrawn. This will only affect the ability to exercise neighbourhood planning powers and will not affect the existence or creation of any other neighbourhood community voluntary or charitable organisations in the area.

Have Your Say 

We asked for views and comments from residents and other interested parties on the proposed forum’s application for qualifying body status and their neighbourhood area boundary. We asked respondents for their views on whether this forum should be designated for the purposes of preparing a neighbourhood plan for the proposed neighbourhood area.

During the consultation period, East Cliff & Springbourne’s application and supporting documents could be viewed in the 'Documents' section of this page and at:

• Springbourne Library
• Bournemouth Central Library
• Boscombe Library

We asked respondents to give us their views within the consultation period which ran for six weeks from 24 February to 7 April 2025. They could make representations by:

• Completing an online survey or;
• Completing a paper survey which they could download on this page or collect from one of BCP's libraries. Paper surveys could also be emailed to the Planning Team or dropped in the 'Have Your Say' boxes in any BCP library or posted to: East Cliff & Springbourne Neighbourhood Forum and Area Designation Consultation, Neighbourhood Planning Team, Planning Policy, BCP Council, Civic Centre, Bourne Avenue, Bournemouth BH2 6DY.
• Writing to us; or
• Sending an email to neighbourhoodplanning@bcpcouncil.gov.uk.

If respondents had any questions, needed support or needed the documents in a different format, they could email neighbourhoodplanning@bcpcouncil.gov.uk. They could also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

The consultation closed at 11:59pm on 7 April 2025.

Next steps

All comments received during the consultation period will be considered and will feed into our formal decision-making process. If the council approves the application, the East Cliff and Springbourne Neighbourhood Forum will be able to operate as a qualifying body, for the purpose of neighbourhood planning in the designated area for a period of five years.