All over Wiltshire, the locals are doing it for themselves. In half a dozen parishes, local people are working on the neighbourhood plans that will set the agenda for residential and commercial development up to 2026.
Although the first plans are unlikely to be approved by referendum until next May, there are already signs that local control does not necessarily mean a blanket ban on development.
But according to both the critics and the supporters of the new approach to rural planning, it could lead to some very uneven results.
Leading the way
Wiltshire is leading the way. Not only is the county among the first to have its recently approved core strategy tested against the new National Planning Policy Framework, but it has chosen to write its policy in a way that embraces localism.
The final policy document lists just 12 strategic sites and it will be up to neighbourhood plans to provide the rest of the land needed to meet commercial needs and provide the additional 18,000 homes expected to be built over the next 15 years.
According to councillor Fleur de Rhe-Philipe, Wiltshire cabinet member for economic development, handing most of the land allocation policy to neighbourhoods is just good democratic common sense. “We’ve identified sites sufficient for most of the county’s housing needs, but we would rather neighbourhoods identify sites themselves,” she says. “If you dump a housing estate on an area very much against their will, you start off on the wrong foot.”
Wiltshire has cut its housing allocation from 44,000 to 37,000 for the years to 2026, and half have been built.
If Wiltshire’s 252 parish council areas do not come up with a plan – or sufficient sites are not allocated – the county council has reserved the right to step in. But, according to Rhe-Philipe, they will not rush to take control.
“It’s a possibility we won’t see enough land allocated or enough neighbourhood plans agreed, but there are four pilot projects already underway and many of the other parishes already have parish plans, so they aren’t starting from scratch,” she says.
Royal Wooten Bassett, Cricklade, Malmesbury and land on the fringes of Warminster are already the subject of draft plans, but the first completed documents will not be agreed until next year at the earliest, and the council will give others a chance to catch up before imposing rule from its Trowbridge HQ.
Risky strategy
Close observers are not so sure it will work. Chris Beaver is the West Country planning director at surveyor GL Hearn. He wonders if local councils like Wiltshire are using the new planning structures to defend themselves against development.
He says: “Wiltshire is relying upon communities coming forward with their own neighbourhood plans to provide the housing that is required. This appears to be a very risky strategy in the context of an already very limited land supply. I have no confidence that neighbourhood plans, which are designed to be pro-growth, will deliver on the ground.”
Beaver hints that relying on neighbourhood plans might be a clever way to kick development into the long political grass. He says: “Neighbourhood plans are difficult to get off the ground – it takes a lot of effort from local people, a lot of money, it has to go before inspectors, which will need professional help, and in the end it might all get undone because it is not approved at a referendum. My fear is not so much that neighbourhood plans won’t deliver, but that we won’t get any neighbourhood plans at all. Wiltshire is taking a gamble.”
Rhe-Philipe insists that is nonsense. “We’re not being cynical, things really do work better from the bottom up. This is localism,” she says. “I think the NPPF is an agenda for growth, and I think localism could pull the other way, but that tension is there in every area of government. It is what democracy is all about.”
Evidence from the grassroots points both ways. It suggests that Beaver is right that a very small number of plans will be agreed, but that Rhe-Philipe is right that when they are agreed they will be pro-growth.
In Malmesbury, a pro-development local plan is being drafted that embraces more than 270 new homes in the town and another 135 in its hinterland. Yet, the process of devising the plan has left some locals convinced that most neighbourhoods will struggle to draw up a plan of their own.
As well as homes, there will be site allocation for industrial development, proposals for expanded infrastructure and costed proposals on how to spend section 106 funds. With Sainsbury’s hovering over the town, anxious to build, completing the document has begun to seem urgent.
Securing the best deal
Simon Killane, the town’s county councillor, is chairing the group that is preparing the plan. He says: “It’s a real struggle. I’m working 72 hours a week, and my day job as a designer is gone.” He adds: “This is community led, not developer led. It can be done, but it needs a complete change of culture. We knew if we walked away and didn’t take the opportunity to write this plan we’d get twice as much development, and it would be poor quality, too. So we’re using anything we can – including a neighbourhood plan – to haggle for the best deal for the town.”
Not only does Malmesbury have Killane and his 20-strong steering committee, it has a £20,000 contribution from the government in honour of its pilot project status, tens of thousands of pounds-worth of help from the Princes Foundation, free advice from Planning Aid and helpful support from Wiltshire council. Few other neighbourhoods will be as well resourced.
“We’ve been lucky on resources,” says Killane. “We’re working on the assumption that people aren’t opposed to new houses, just opposed to developers dumping houses on them and the crony relationships they too often have with local councils. Locals are suspicious and won’t engage but now we’re changing that, going full tilt to get people involved, and we do it as publicly as possible.”
The latest round of consultation begins this summer, ready for a final draft by the end of the year. All being well, the plan will be approved in a referendum next May.
Killane says that although Malmesbury has been fortunate, others in Wiltshire and throughout rural England will be less well-organised.
It is still too early to say what neighbourhood plans will deliver. But if Wiltshire is any guide, the outcomes will be truly local and unpredictable.
Grim up North
Not every attempt to write a neighbourhood plan goes smoothly. In Malton, North Yorkshire, attempts to draw up a plan to promote development on the town’s two-acre cattle market site have stalled.
The town council – and the majority of residents – wanted to see retail development on the old cattle market and not on the site of the town’s only long-stay car park. But Ryedale council preferred to sell the site for around £5m along with planning permission for a 45,000 sq ft retail scheme.
Town clerk Mike Skehan says they are trapped. They can only influence Ryedale by having a neighbourhood plan – and because Ryedale has not yet agreed the core strategy of its Local Development Framework, Malton’s town council is debarred from completing its own plan, because neighbourhood plans have to be in conformity with core strategies.
Skehan says: “It’s the era of anti-localism as far as I can see. We made a genuine effort to prepare a draft neighbourhood plan, we consulted widely, and we spent £8,000 on hiring consultants to help, which is big money for us. We did a rigorous job.”
