The key to preparing an effective Neighbourhood Plan is to play to your strengths as a community – strengths which lie in the detailed knowledge you have about local circumstances and in your ability to provide new updated information at the very local level. You can use these to set effective policies that cannot easily be ignored.
Local Plans are supported by weighty evidence base studies, but these are prepared at a moment in time and then the information starts to age and its quality starts to reduce. Local Authority studies are often coarse-grained in relation to the parish level.
More detailed local information, collected in an objective way, can therefore add significant value to your understanding of and case for community infrastructure provision, considered against standards of provision and sustainability considerations. These are things which should be considered when local plan site allocations are being assessed or when development proposals come along. Neighbourhood Plan policies can be prepared to ensure that they are considered.
Pellegram have been helping Neighbourhoods to consider the adequacy of provision of different types of community infrastructure based on current provision against accepted standards and future population change resulting from demographic trends and planned/consented housing development. This includes cemetery spaces, allotments, local sports provision, community halls, access to the health services, education provision and jobs.
Another important way in which local community evidence can be considered fully in local plan development and in planning application preparation is to simply provide supporting information that is factual, true and relevant and then to demand in policy only that which is supported by the information. In most cases, this will be to require that the information provided is considered in the context of adopted policies and NPPF policies to secure sustainable development outcomes.
Pellegram have helped parish councils to do this in neighbourhood plan policies but also in response to planning applications and in making local plan representations. The challenge is to show that information is relevant and requires action to address through more detailed studies to avoid environmental impacts. Key examples include surface water flood risk where developer assessments are desk-based with unproven site conditions supporting an outline drainage strategy, or development locations which are not sustainable locations in the context of access to essential services by active travel routes.
If you would like more information on how to tackle a particular problem or opportunity in your area, get in touch and we will be happy to help you.