Eye and Dunsden Neighbourhood Plan

Eye and Dunsden Parish Council is working on creating a neighbourhood plan to influence the way their area grows and develops into the future.

What’s happening now?

Eye and Dunsden Parish Council submitted their draft neighbourhood plan to South Oxfordshire District Council in October 2025.

The publicity period on the draft plan concluded on 27 January 2026. The draft plan documents and comments received during the publicity period have now been submitted for independent examination.

Following this publicity period, the government commenced Sections 98 & 99 of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, resulting in the need for changes to be made to the Basic Conditions Statement and Neighbourhood Plan. A focused consultation on the updates made to these documents concluded in June 2026. The responses to this consultation were submitted to the independent examiner.

Andrew Ashcroft has been appointed by the District Council to carry out the examination. The examiner’s role is to make recommendations on the draft plan, and ultimately recommend if the plan should proceed to referendum. Take a look at the Examination Arrangements.

The examiner has issued a Clarification Note, setting out initial comments on the submitted plan and outlining areas where further clarification would be useful. The Parish Council have issued a response to the Clarification Note.

In response to representations made on the plan and the Clarification Note, the Parish Council has produced an addendum to their Landscape Character Assessment. As this document introduces additional information on the policy approach taken in the Plan, the independent examiner has asked the District Council to invite comments on the addendum.

We are therefore inviting comments on the Landscape Character Assessment Addendum for three weeks from Wednesday, 12 August 2026 to 11.59pm on Thursday, 3 September 2026.Please note that comments should be related to the Landscape Character Assessment Addendum, there is no need for earlier comments made on the Plan to be restated.

You can view the publicity documents below:

Landscape Character Assessment Addendum
Appendix II: Landscape Character Assessment
Eye and Dunsden Neighbourhood Plan (Updated during Examination – See Modifications Document)

You can view the supporting documents below:

Examination documents:

Paper copies of the consultation documents are available to view at The Crown, Playhatch, RG4 9QN at the following times:

Monday – Thursday	7:00 – 23:00
Friday	7:00 – 00:00
Saturday	8:00 – 00:00
Sunday and Bank Holidays	8:00 – 22:30

The documents can also be viewed by appointment at the District Council’s office at Abbey House, Abbey Close, Abingdon OX14 3JE on Monday to Thursday 8.30am – 5pm and Friday 8.30am – 4pm. Please email or call us to make an appointment.

The consultation documents can be made available to view in an alternative format (for example large print, braille, audio, easy read and alternative languages) on request.

Please contact us on 01235 422600 or email planning.policy@southandvale.gov.uk if you need help accessing the consultation materials or have any queries about this consultation.

If you know anyone you think would be interested in this focused consultation, who does not have access to the internet, we would appreciate your help in telling them about it. Please ask them to get in touch with us via our contact details provided above.

How to comment

The quickest and easiest way to join the conversation is to use our online comment form. Comments can also be made by:

emailing planning.policy@southandvale.gov.uk
writing to Planning Policy, South Oxfordshire District Council and post to ‘Freepost SOUTH AND VALE CONSULTATIONS’ (no other address information or stamp is needed)
completing a paper comment form and posting or emailing it back to us

Next steps

After the consultation ends, your comments, name, email (if applicable) and postal address will be sent to an independent examiner to consider. The opportunity for further comments at this stage would only be at the specific request of the examiner.

Most neighbourhood plans are examined without the need for a public hearing. If you think the neighbourhood plan requires a public hearing, you can state this in your comments, but the examiner will make the final decision.

Please clearly state in your comments if you wish to be notified of our decision on whether we formally adopt the Neighbourhood Plan.

All personal data will be held securely by the council and examiner in line with the Data Protection Act 2018. Comments submitted by individuals may be made public (including online publication) alongside the individual’s full name. Details within your comments referring to specific addresses may be published, where these are relevant to the planning matters being commented on. No other contact details will be published. Comments submitted on behalf of individuals/businesses/organisations may be made public (including online publication) alongside the full name of the individual/agent submitting the comments (where provided), together with the full name of the individual/business/organisation that the submission has been made on behalf of. Details within your comments referring to specific addresses may be published, where these are relevant to the planning matters being commented on. No other contact details will be published. Further information on how we store personal data is provided in our privacy statement.

More information on the process is available on our Neighbourhood Planning Resources page.

If you would like to discuss neighbourhood planning with a member of the team, please contact us.