A series of open houses will take place in the RM of Hanover this week as part of the municipality's review of its Development Plan.

Planning Manager Jeremy Neufeld says under provincial law, the municipality is required to review its Development Plan every five years. The current Plan was given final approval in 2009.

The open houses have been planned for Tuesday, September 22 from 5-8pm at Blumenort School and Wednesday, September 23 from 5-8pm at Grunthal Fire Hall. Neufeld notes just because these two communities have been selected as host sites, does not mean the information is specific to only those two communities.

"We wanted to kind of make them available in two different areas of the municipality, just to try and make it a little more convenient," notes Neufeld. "There will be other open houses during this process that will be held in other communities. Again, we're just trying to spread it around to make it more convenient for people."

According to Neufeld, the municipality is in the background stages of its review. The intent is to create visionary exercises, help the public understand what's going on in Hanover with the various land uses and to find out what residents want. The open houses will be hosted by consultants from Lombard North Group and will include a number of poster boards outlining the information as well as providing opportunity for questions and comments.

"Ultimately anybody living or owning land in Hanover should have an interest in it," suggests Neufeld. "The information that's going to be collected at these open houses is what's going to be used to help develop policies with land use going forward. Specifically business owners, agricultural producers, land developers, these are policies that are going to greatly affect possibly what they could be doing going forward."

Neufeld says the goal is to have the Development Plan approved between August and October of 2016.