Submitting an e-petition and guidance on e-petitions on planning and licensing matters
An e-petition is a petition which collects signatures online. This allows petitions and supporting information to be made available to a much wider audience than a traditional paper based petition.
Anyone who lives, works or studies in Central Bedfordshire can submit or sign an e-petition. 100 signatures are required for an e-petition to be submitted to the next stage.
If you create an e-petition you will be required to provide us with your contact details. We may ask the relevant service team to respond to you on the issue you raise. If you sign an e-petition on this website, you will be required to give basic personal information to verify that the signature is genuine. Your name (but no other details) will be published on the e-petition website.
The email address is personal to one person, ie you, and can be used once to sign. No other person can use this email address to sign, even if they share it with you.
To sign an e-petition please click on the e-petition link listed below and follow the instructions.
If you get an error message, navigate back to the e-petition page and log in using your user name and password. Click on the log in button ONCE and wait for the website to respond. This will redirect you to the e-petition signature page and you can sign the e-petition.
To submit a new e-petition please click on the "submit a new e-petition" button below.
Guidance on e-petitions on planning and licensing matters
Any resident can request that we host an electronic petition, or e-petition, via our website relating to any matter that we have responsibility for or on which it shares responsibility thorough a partnership arrangement.
E-petitions should be submitted through this website where they will be reviewed to determine whether or not the e-petition is valid. If validated the petition will normally be hosted on our website for a period of 6 weeks unless you request an alternative timescale.
Petitions that cannot be dealt with under this scheme include the following:
- any matter relating to a planning decision
- any matter relating to a development plan document
- any matter relating to an alcohol, gambling or sex establishment licensing decision, or
- any matter where there is an appeals procedure in place
Whilst petitions are not permitted on any of the above, wherever possible, we look for alternative solutions to enable members of the public to have their say and be part of the decision-making process. For this reason, petitions on planning and development plan matters can be sent directly to the relevant teams to be considered when making a decision on any particular matter. As all of the above relate to quasi-judicial processes we are unable to host e-petitions as it may impact disproportionately on that process.
Petitions relating to planning decisions should be emailed to planning@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk.
Petitions relating to development plan documents should be emailed to localplan@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk.
Whilst other websites offer to host e-petitions on behalf of residents, such as change.org, we do not currently accept those e-petitions unless it can be verified that all signatories live or work in the area of Central Bedfordshire and that the wording of the e-petition has not been changed at any point during the process.