Housing and planning minister Brandon Lewis has announced new powers to make it quicker and easier for communities to create neighbourhood plans.
More than 5.2 million people live in one of the 1,274 areas across England where the community is working together to create a neighbourhood plan. But agreeing an area for a neighbourhood plan to cover takes an average of 19 weeks.
Yesterday’s changes will enable even more communities to follow in their footsteps: councils will have just 13 weeks to consider a community’s application to create a neighbourhood area.
This timeframe is reduced to 8 weeks where the neighbourhood area follows a parish boundary, and where applications cover an area straddling more than one planning authority the period for consideration will be extended to 20 weeks.
But the government is also clarifying the information that must be submitted with the neighbourhood plan. This will ensure independent examiners have sufficient information to assess the plan’s environmental effect.
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said: “We’re seeing a genuine neighbourhood planning movement with communities in almost two-thirds of local authorities already using these powers to shape what gets built where in their local area. Now I want to go further and see more communities making the most of the powers we’ve put in their hands.
“Today’s measures will speed up the process, making it quicker and easier to get a neighbourhood plan together so that the views of local people are written clearly in black and white for developers and councils to see, and ensure that future development in those areas delivers the homes communities themselves want to see.”
More than 160 communities have been consulted on draft neighbourhood plans with 31 plans now in force and used for determining planning applications.
These frontrunners include Arundel in West Sussex, where the neighbourhood plan approves proposals to turn disused buildings into office space, and supports the development of business within the built up area boundary of the market town. The plan also encourages the use and development of ‘Live Work Units’ that are especially suited to small businesses in the arts and cultural sectors, which are common to Arundel.
