The first neighbourhood plan for the town was made in 2016, making housing site allocations well in excess of the notional housing number provided by the planning authority. The Town Council was keen to maintain the status of the plan in decision making (by engaging NPPF §14) and decided to carry out a two stage review process, appointing us to provide professional support.

 

The first review was intended to make material modifications to bring the plan policies up to date, but not in ways that would ‘change the nature of the plan’ (and so would be unlikely to have to go back to referendum). We helped refresh the made policies and to supplement them (for example with a new design and heritage policy to unpack what was originally a generic policy). This included updating the evidence base, including a new Town Design Study.

 

We prepared the necessary modification documents – slightly different to a conventional plan project – and the plan passed its examination and was modified and made in 2021. We have now embarked on the second stage of the review, which is focusing on identifying brownfield redevelopment and other policy opportunities in and around the town centre to align with the emerging Local Plan.