We are delighted that two of our Neighbourhood Plans: Westbury and Berinsfield, have recently passed through referendum and have now been made.
Westbury
ONH Planner, Matt Jennings took the lead on this project, working with Westbury Parish Council in Buckinghamshire to finalise the Neighbourhood Plan. Westbury is one of many communities impacted by HS2, with the new railway passing to the western side of the village, bringing a sharp focus to the need for strategic planning to the local community.
"The Westbury Neighbourhood Plan project began at the end of 2018, but like many others, it was put on hold as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. After restarting in 2022, the Steering Group conducted a community consultation exercise which was well attended by residents of the Parish. The output of this consultation directly influenced the path that the plan took: ‘incremental growth within the existing development footprint’.
The decision was taken to draw a settlement boundary that was more permissive and precise than the Local Authority’s definition, as an alternative to formally allocating sites for housing development. A Design Code was commissioned, alongside the Neighbourhood Plan, to guide the small scale, infill housing that may come forward within the settlement boundary over the next 15 years. The community-led approach taken by the Parish Council resulted in an excellent result at the referendum stage, with a 94.5% approval of the Neighbourhood Plan. This result is a testament to the work of the Steering Group and Parish Council throughout the project."
Berinsfield
Neil Homer, Planner and Managing Director at ONH, worked with Berinsfield Parish Council on the Berinsfield Neighbourhood Plan, this was a longer term project, working with a village that had been allocated very significant growth, and wanted to have a say in how that development shaped the future of the village.
"We were very pleased to see the Berinsfield Neighbourhood Plan pass through its referendum in January.
We joined the project in 2019 but it had been running since 2013. The Parish Council’s first attempt failed to secure the support of the examiner as it proposed housing and employment allocations in the Oxford Green Belt that surrounds the village. In the meantime the LPA had made progress with its new Local Plan, which proposed a strategic allocation to double the size of the village. The successful neighbourhood plan seeks to give some direction as to how the future planning of that allocation should fit with the regeneration of the existing homes and services.
The Parish Council should be admired for their tenacity in sticking with the project for more than a decade. The local community deserves the long overdue regeneration ‘carrots’ dangled by an allocation that continues to trundle on. It was a shame that the plan was not given the chance to shape the new village and that the Green Belt hindered ideas for new job creation… perhaps ideas that can be reviewed in the light of the Grey Belt!"
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