The Parish Council started its neighbourhood plan project in 2016 with a view to make housing site allocations to prevent more speculative development in the light of the out of date Local Plan and ongoing housing land supply problems in the district. We were appointed to draft the plan for them and to manage the site assessment process.

 

A combination of the historic character of the village, of the traffic issues it faced and of the land made available for development by landowners (some of whom were continuing to test the resolve of the planning authority by making planning applications as well) meant that we needed to deploy our spatial options tool as part of the process. This allowed the community to consider how to make the necessary trade-offs at a broader spatial scale rather than on specific sites at the outset. We have found this approach works very well in such circumstances.

 

The community made its preferences known on what would be the best part of the village to grow and we worked with the landowner to bring forward a concept scheme to show how its potential for effects could be successfully mitigated. The proposal in the draft plan won the support of the community and the plan was examined and made only 18 months after the project start, one of the fastest of those we have helped so far.