Neighbourhood planning enables communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and work and in supporting new development proposals.
This is because unlike the parish, village or town plans that communities may have prepared, a neighbourhood plan forms part of the development plan and sits alongside the Local Plan prepared by the local planning authority. Decisions on planning applications will be made using both the Local Plan and the Neighbourhood Plan, and any other material considerations.
Neighbourhood planning provides the opportunity for communities to set out a positive vision for how they want their community to develop over the next 10, 15 or 20 years, in ways that meet identified local need and make sense for local people. They can put in place planning policies that will help deliver that vision or grant planning permission for the development they want to see.
Communities that take a proactive approach by drawing up a Neighbourhood Plan and securing the consent of local people in a referendum, will benefit from 25 percent of the revenues from the Community Infrastructure Levy arising from the development that takes place in their area.
A Neighbourhood Plan will help to give us more power to develop a shared vision for our neighbourhood and shape the development and growth of our local area. We will be able to choose where we want new homes and other buildings to be built, have our say on what those new buildings should look like and what infrastructure should be provided, and grant planning permission for the new buildings we want to see go ahead.
Neighbourhood planning provides a powerful set of tools to ensure that we get the right types of development for our community where the ambition of the neighbourhood is aligned with the strategic needs and priorities of the wider local area. We can choose to set planning policies through a neighbourhood plan that is used in determining planning applications.
Our Neighbourhood Plan
Telford & Wrekin Council had been working on a revised Local Plan over a period of three years and whilst waiting for the process to move forward, rural areas such as Waters Upton became vulnerable and it was noted that developers were submitting planning applications for homes in the rural villages.
Because Waters Upton was named in the Local Development Framework as a ‘settlement suitable for development’, we were targeted and it soon became clear that we needed a Neighbourhood Plan to help to shape your future.
The process to create a Neighbourhood Plan involves much consultation with the community at every stage in order that the document truly represents the views of the residents.
The Waters Upton Neighbourhood Plan was created in June 2016.
Neighbourhood Plan June 2016