Disproportionate burden assessment for The Draft Plan for the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden

Scope

The Draft Plan for the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community will be published for public consultation in March 2022 for a period of six weeks. This is a statutory planning consultation.

The Town and Country Planning Regulations state that 'availability of documents' means copies of planning consultation documents being made available on the Council's website.

The plan is a joint plan prepared with Tendring and Essex Councils and the project has a dedicated engagement website. A copy of the plan and all background documents will be published on the engagement website and customers will be directed to the engagement website. The engagement website will include the plan in an accessible version. The lengthy plan will be broken down into sections and placed on the engagement website as HTML, in addition to a pdf version for those who wish to read the whole document. However, it remains that there is a requirement to publish the draft plan and Sustainability Appraisal report on the Council's website.

Benefits of creating an accessible version

The benefits of creating an HTML version of this PDF would be:

• A fully accessible version for all users to access
• An easily searchable and indexable version

Burden placed on the organisation

Creating an accessible version of the draft plan would place an additional expense on the organisation. As steps have been taken to make the draft plan accessible on the engagement website it is not considered that an accessible version needs to be prepared for the Council's website.

Contributing factors

Other factors relevant to this decision are:

• The draft plan is too lengthy to be made into a webpage (approx. 100 pages) and it would be difficult for customers to navigate.

Assessment

Having considered the estimated effort involved in creating an accessible version, we have concluded that the work involved would be an inappropriate use of staff time. This represents a disproportionate burden on the organisation.

View the Draft Plan

If you need any of the information from the PDF provided in another format, contact tcbgardencommunity@colchester.gov.uk.