The fun and frustration of neighbourhood plans

I seem to have spent the last few weeks firmly back in the world of Neighbourhood Plans and it’s a frustrating world.

Tuesday of last week was spent in the district council offices attending a planning appeal hearing.

Cedar Homes had submitted a planning application to build 28 homes in Drayton on a site which had not been included in Drayton Neighbourhood Plan. The planning committee had refused the application using the Neighbourhood Plan as part of the justification. Good news so far.

Cedar Homes appealed on the grounds that without a five-year land supply, the council have to grant permission for anything – OK I’m simplifying a little but this is the core of the argument.

Now, for those of us who have been following the progress of the district council Local Plan, the inspector (Mr Rivett) confirmed in his comments on the plan that the housing commitment is over seven years. The catch in the argument (according to Cedar Homes) is that until the plan is approved, this can’t be used. We appear to be left without anything to fight with.

It was a long day with lots of legal arguments and a parish council who were very frustrated that the Neighbourhood Plan that they have spent so much time and effort getting agreement to was potentially being overruled. We await a ruling from the appeal inspector (Mr Jones).

Now Wantage Neighbourhood Plan.

As you will have seen in the Herald a few weeks ago, another planning inspector (Mr Parmiter) has rejected the Wantage plan. Another group of frustrated town councillors and neighbourhood plan volunteers sat down last week to review what to do next.

The decision was to regroup and revise the policies, taking account of the inspector’s comments and to try again. The feeling at the meeting was that the community and the town council have invested too much time, energy and money to stop now.

It was clear from the meeting that the planning policies in the Neighbourhood Plan are important to Wantage and we shouldn’t give up because the inspector didn’t think we had enough evidence for some of our policies.

At the end of a complex meeting the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group agreed that the policies requiring amendment could be organised into three groups:

1. Town Centre Policies

2. Green Infrastructure Policies

3. Community Infrastructure Policies.

Anyone wishing to volunteer to work on the changes to these policies should get in touch with the deputy Town Clerk (Katie Buckingham) via the town council office in the Beacon or via email to “wantagedeputy@btconnect.com”.