Parish and town councils "put off by lack of clarity on weight given to neighbourhood plans"

Parish and town councils have been keen to embrace neighbourhood planning but have been put off “as it was unclear what weight they were given in the planning process especially where there was no local plan or five-year land supply”, the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) has said.

The Law Society’s Planning and Environmental Law Committee has meanwhile called for local planning authorities to be given further resources to implement not just the neighbourhood planning process but the plan-making process generally.

NALC’s comments were made in evidence given to the Neighbourhood Planning Public Bill committee. It said the influence and status of neighbourhood plans in the planning system needed to be enhanced if “[their] potential was to be achieved and people not put off the process because the plans were ignored”.

The association claimed that where local councils were undertaking neighbourhood planning they were leading to more houses being built than in non-neighbourhood planning areas.

Jonathan Owen, NALC’s chief executive, told the committee: “NALC broadly welcomes the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, which will address many of the problems parishes have experienced by giving more weight to plans earlier in the process and making it easier to modify plans and neighbourhood areas. 

“But we are very much concerned about the legal weight of neighbourhood plans as they sometimes appear to be ridden roughshod over by certain developers and not given proper consideration at times by other parts of local government. We want this bill to clear this confusion up.”

Owen added: “Neighbourhood Plans are a way to give local people greater influence and control over the future development of their communities. It is good to see that the government recognises this and that these plans are a mechanism to allow communities to influence the building of housing within their own area more directly.

“But we believe more can be done and we are ready to discuss with the government our ideas about how we can support and incentivise communities to take up these relatively new statutory powers and opportunities.”

In its response to a consultation on reforms to neighbourhood planning, the Law Society’s Planning and Environmental Law Committee said it fully supported proposals to streamline processes.

It did warn however that the Government’s proposal to place a requirement on local planning authorities to review and update their statements of community involvement at least every five years had the potential to place an additional burden on local planning authorities.

The committee said: “We believe that local planning authorities need to be provided with further resources by Government to implement not just the neighbourhood planning process but the plan-making process generally including the preparation of their local plans – this is evidenced by the large number of local planning authorities which still do not have an up to date local plan. Any steps the Government can take to allocate more resources, whether this be financial or otherwise, to these authorities would be welcomed."