After the NDP referendum

Neighbourhood development plans, the referendum

and after

This blog discusses the issues raised from the

experience of drawing up a Neighbourhood Development

Plan and putting it to examination and referendum

‘material consideration’, and it would be reasonable

for a decision-maker to give substantial weight to

comments based on the substantial evidence base

represented by a draft NDP even if ‘the people’ had

not yet formally endorsed it.

A DCLG official has also agreed that it would be

reasonable in following section 38(6) for a decision maker

to give substantial weight to an NDP based on

substantial evidence, even if it failed its referendum.

Parish Council representations must be given

weight whether there is an NDP in preparation or

not. It would be perverse to give less and not more

weight to representations based on evidence

collected from the local population over a number of

years and through considerable expense in time and

money, just because of a failure to secure the

majority vote at a referendum. Such a failure could

be due to opposition to a single controversial

proposal or policy.

In these circumstances, asking, as the current

regulations require, whether the plan should be

‘used to help in making decisions’ is pointless, as

the plan must be taken into account whatever the

result of the referendum.

Given that the effect of an NDP receiving a simple

majority vote is that it becomes the ‘development

plan’ for the neighbourhood area for the purposes of

section 38(6), this should have been the question

put in the referendum. If this is too legalistic for the

voters to understand, then the question could relate

to another real effect of a ‘yes’ vote – whether more

weight should be given to the NDP than the Local

Plan covering the same area. However, in order to

cast a vote on this question, it would reasonably be

necessary for the electorate to know the contents

of the relevant Local Plan and be able to compare

its effect against the possible effect of the NDP (at

least one honest villager spoiled their voting paper,

being unable to make this comparison).

Over 1,000 NDPs are in preparation and over 50

have received support at referendum. It is not yet

known how many such plans have been tested at

committee or appeal in the determination of

applications by local planning authorities or the

Secretary of State. However, in the knowledge that

very few people would have been either able or

willing to read, understand and compare an NDP

with the relevant Local Plan, it might be reasonable

(in silent defiance of the regulations) in the exercise

of their judgement for a decision-maker to give little

or no more weight to a Neighbourhood Plan that got

its majority than to one that did not.

In my village about 30% of those entitled to vote

supported the NDP without, I would suggest,

carrying out the relevant comparison but as a show

of solidarity with those people who had put the

time and effort into the preparation of the plan. This

does not appear to be a good or sufficient reason to

raise a plan prepared by lay volunteers to the status

of the ‘development plan’ in substitution for a Local

Plan prepared by professionals. It will be very

interesting to see the feedback from professional

planners when they have had experience of giving

development plan status to NDP policies.

Without very close supervision over the

preparation of NDPs in a way that preserves the

spirit of ‘localism’, planning officers are likely to find

themselves trying to apply policies which are

insufficiently precise, prescriptive or proscriptive to

form a sound and reasonable basis for decision making

in accordance with section 38(6).

Notes

1 D. Lock: ‘CMK Business Neighbourhood Plan megaballots’.

Town & Country Planning, 2015, Vol. 84, Feb.,

58-60

2 Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for

Communities and Local Government Penny Mordaunt,

reported in Hansard, 4 Mar. 2015, Column 360WH.

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/

cmhansrd/cm150304/halltext/150304h0002.htm#

15030472000340

3 Section 38(6) states: ‘If regard is to be had to the

development plan for the purpose of any determination

to be made under the planning Acts the determination

must be made in accordance with the plan unless

material considerations indicate otherwise.’

184 Town & Country Planning April 2015