Dealing with representations to LDF documents - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

At Wokingham, we had over 1,000 standard letters following submission of the Core Strategy. Each one of these had to be entered as a separate respondent into our consultation system. It was due to these standard letters (each with at least seven representations) that Wokingham ended up with over 13,000 representations on its submission Core Strategy. The index of respondents attached illustrates who sent in the standard letters.

For the Epping Forest Gypsy & Travelers DPD we encouraged all of those wishing to submit a special 'group response form' this was successful and there were no petitions and very few circular responses. This was largely done for legal reasons because anonymous responses, or responses to petitions without a full name and address, could not be considered (this was because of challenges to the vailidity of responses to the Brentwood gypsy and traveller DPD issues and options) The form can be found here http://www.eppingforestdc.gov.uk/Library/files/planning/gypsies_and_travellers/multi-response%20template.pdf A the guidance says 'If a group would prefer to submit a single questionnaire that a number of people then sign up to, this is acceptable. However, we must receive name, relevant contact information and a signature for each of those that have signed up to this response. Please use the form below for this purpose. The template can be photocopied if necessary."

Thanks for the advice so far. Another issue has arisen in our handling of comments - how do others deal with potentailly racist or discriminatory comments made as part of submitted comments? Do you: - reject the representation in its entirety as invalid? - edit out the offending comments when entering into Limehouse? - enter them as submitted with a disclaimer that "the Council does not endorse the views expressed"? - or another approach? Any advice gratefully received. PS Josie, useful chat the other day around this general topic.

I stopped working for local authorities before Limehouse became commonplace. However, with regard to your point about racist or discriminatory comments, at all 3 councils I worked for, we simply ignored any 'non-planning' comments. If the whole response is made up of a 'rant' then we used to lump them together in an 'other responses received' summary. We also wrote back to the representor stating we did not feel any of their comments were related to the plan/proposal in question and would not be taken any further.