Last month I was delighted to host a meeting with Councillors from South Suffolk’s parishes regarding neighbourhood plans. The meeting, which was held at Hadleigh Town Hall, was well attended with representatives from many of the villages across the constituency.
The purpose of the meeting was clear; I wanted to impress upon those gathered the necessity of drawing up a neighbourhood plan, and allocating sites within that plan. A neighbourhood plan is a way for parishes, or groups of them, to have greater control over development in their area. The plans cannot stop development but there is no doubt that a community without such a plan will be more vulnerable to speculative development than one with a made plan and where – crucially – they have used the plan to allocate sites for new housing.
What does ‘allocating sites’ mean and why it is so significant? The answer is that I have not known a community yet that is unable to answer fairly forthrightly the question of where they don’t want development to go. Allocating sites is the much harder question for communities of where they do want it. But by going through that process and drawing up a plan with a reasonable allocation of homes for the future, the neighbourhood plan has far greater weight in law.
I would describe this as the classic trade-off between ‘pain’ and ‘gain’. There is no point denying that the process for a community to allocate sites could be very controversial and divisive. But going through that pain brings the gain of far greater control in future, and the likelihood that housing numbers in the area will be more sustainable than in the absence of such a plan.
Of course, neighbourhood plans are not just about the number of homes, but also about the type and design of new developments. Hence, given the importance of these subjects to my constituents, I hope that my meeting can be a catalyst for communities to get activated and plan for a sustainable future.
Article by James Cartlidge MP. Published by Keith Avis.