Neighbourhoods and recovering VAT - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

We've had a question into the PAS inbox along these lines: 

A neighbourhood is commissioning work to support their neighbourhood plan. They want their LPA to recover the VAT so they can use it to buy more work. 

In principle I can't see a problem if this is thought about in advance so the LPA holds the money on behalf of the NP. 

Anyone else have a view or do something similar ?