Neighbourhood Plans
Neighbourhood planning is the government's initiative of trying to empower local communities to help make and take forward planning proposals at a local level. The idea being that local people will be the driver to help shape how their local communities grow and develop over the next coming years.
Neighbourhood plans can only be made by one of two groups town/parishes or neighbourhood forums. As our area has parishes, town and parishes will take the lead in pushing them forward.
A neighbourhood plan must be in general conformity with the local development plan. In this case, this would be the South Oxfordshire Core Strategy. Once the proposals are in general conformity with our plan, it will be subject to an Examination in Public. If this is successful we can then put the document out for a local referendum and as long as it receives 50% or more with regards to support, we would adopt the document into our Local Development Framework.
You can find out further details regarding neighbourhood plans by visiting the planning portal.
Front runner status for neighbourhood plans
As this is a new initiative the government has awarded a series of grants to local authorities looking to support trialing the neighbourhood planning process. We have received two grants to support Thame Town Council's and Woodcote Parish Council's respective neighbourhood plans. The neighbourhood plans are still driven by the respective town and parish council, but we will provide support in helping to ensure that the process conforms with the guidelines for neighbourhood planning.
Evidence
Evidence will be key to neighbourhood planning. In the preparation of our policy documents, we used a wide array of evidence based studies. To get an appreciation of these different studies visit our evidence base page.
To get an appreciation of some of the mechanisms of engagement necessary, it may be useful to also look at our community-led planning section.
Last reviewed: 29 - 03 - 2012
