The Kimbles is a group of small settlements on the edge of Chilterns AONB. The Parish Council was prompted by the newly adopted Local Plan in 2017 to bring forward a neighbourhood plan to allocate sites for 130 homes. We were appointed by the Council to help navigate it through a challenging spatial planning and site assessment process.

 

We have refined an efficient but highly effective process that enables clients to correctly follow the regulations but that also gives the community the chance to take into account the benefits that some sites propose to deliver. This incentivises land promoters to offer more than the minimum to meet policy standards in order to secure an allocation.

 

The sites selected will deliver a new public open space and village shop for the village as benefits that would not have been secured had there been no plan. The plan was successfully examined with the full support of the planning authority and received a large majority vote at the delayed referendum in May 2021.