Neighbourhood Plans Conformity to LDDs - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
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Started - July 2012
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Neighbourhood Plans Conformity to LDDs
I wonder whether colleagues have any thoughts on plan conformity with the Neighbourhood Plan? This is potentially being exacerbated by the delays as a result of the NPPF & other planning changes to the adoption of Core Strategies. I imagine that other areas where the only existing policy is the saved Local Plan (from 1997) and the RSS could be facing a similar question: In such areas what plans should the Neighbourhood Plan have regard to ? Especially in regard to housing numbers. We have an emerging Core Strategy which as identified increased housing numbers and locations for growth - this affects several villages. If one of those villages wants to come in with a Neighbourhood Plan which states they only want to meet the growth proposed in the saved Local Plan rather than the emerging pre-submission Core Strategy would you say that it is in general conformity with existing planning policy? Or can the pre-sub Core Strategy take precedence even though it is only emerging? It is likely to become a growing problem once the RSS has been revoked and there is still no Core Strategy. Do you have any thoughts?
The analogy here is local plans/ldfs conforming with structure plans/RSS From caselaw in the 1980s it is acceptable to make the 'permitted assumption' that a revision of the upper tier plan based on more up to date evidence of housing need will be adopted, and then you conform to that. Old versions of PPG12 and its precursors made this a policy requirement. It is a gap in the current draft of the NPPF but it would be a good idea to revive this. You probably need to ask a planning barrister who was practising 20 years ago and can remember the case.
Andrew Chalmers, modified 12 Years ago.
Re: Neighbourhood Plans Conformity to LDDs
Advocate Posts: 169 Join Date: 20/10/11 Recent Posts
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Wendy setting aside the legal comments made by Andrew surely there is a common sense answer to this one. Your local plan housing requirements and presumably allocations are now at least 14 years old and almost certainly date from 3 or 4 years before that. Unless the evidence that underlies your core strategy can be shown to be incorrect or out of date this must logically form the strategic context for the neighbourhood plan. A neighbourhood plan cannot fail to meet these requirements and still be in conformity. It strikes me that there is a lot of re-inventing the wheel in the neighbourhood plan debate. Evidence is key to the production of both tiers of plan and this should rely on a common evidence base, not least because many neighbourhoods will simply lack the resources to go far on this issue and evidence as many authorities have found is very expensive indeed when you talk about SHLAAs, SFRAs, employment land studies, retail studies...and so on. Given that government states very clearly that nps can only provide more not less housing I cannot see how an examiner could possibly endorse a plan that proposes levels of development more appropriate to the 1990s. It would appear that somewhere the community may have received a mixed up message about what nps can and cannot do (perhaps they interpreted the word localism too literally!) Somehow you might need to explore options on how housing delivery might best be delivered in their area. Of course if they are that opposed to development will your overall strategic approach stand up at examination, does the evidence both from studies AND consultation demonstrate you are pursuing the most appropriate approach which inevitably means growth in their area.