We have been supporting Chesham Town Council in Buckinghamshire to bring forward a Neighbourhood Plan to provide an up to date planning policy framework for the town.  Proposals had been made for a significant release of Green Belt land for housing development, which prompted the Town Council to put its ‘brownfield first’ principle into action.

 

The plan will be published for consultation in spring 2023 and will contain a series of site-specific policies to encourage the beneficial redevelopment of poorly-located and under-utilised brownfield land within the town. But delivering new homes and other uses on brownfield sites is notoriously difficult and so we encouraged the Town Council to consider further de-risking some of the sites by using a number of Neighbourhood Development Orders (NDO). 

 

We succeeded in securing funding support from the Government earlier this year to enable four NDOs to be prepared, consulted on and examined alongside the Plan. Each NDO will cover a cluster of sites in different parts of the town. We are working alongside our consulting partners, Create Streets, who are producing the design codes to support each NDO, whilst we draft and consult on the NDOs themselves. The project is an excellent example of how our creative and spatial thinking skills are matched with experience in delivering development on brownfield land, and with working as part of a large expert team.