What is a Neighbourhood Plan?
Neighbourhood planning was introduced in the Localism Act of 2011. It is a means by which local communities have statutory powers to shape how their communities develop.
Basically, a neighbourhood plan is:
- It is a document that sets out planning policies for the local area, in our case the Parish of Braishfield.
- It is built on a base of evidence from local people and the local authority.
- It is written by residens of the community who understand its needs.
- Local planning authorities and planning inspectors considering planning applications must make their decisions in accordance with the policies in the neighbourhood plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Thus it is a means of ensuring the community gets the right types of development, in the right places.
How will the Neigbourhood plan be created?
- The intial and most importatnt step is to gather the opinions of villagers on how they would like to see the village develop.
- These opnions will be combined with other information, such as demographic data from the Test Valley Borough Council. The resulting data is referred to as the ‘Evidence Base’.i
- Policies will be created in line with the evidence base and published in a Neighbourhood Plan document.
- The Neighbourhood Plan will then be put to a referendum.
- If agreed by a majority of villagers, and accepted by Test Valley, the plan will be “made” and become part of statutory planning process.