Neighbourhood plans: checking whether one covers your site

Find out whether a neighbourhood plan covers your site before you design anything, because a made plan is part of the statutory development plan and the decision has to be made in accordance with it unless material considerations say otherwise. Two searches settle it. The council's neighbourhood planning pages list the designated neighbourhood areas and the stage each plan has reached, and the national planning data service publishes the designated area boundaries as a dataset you can check against a postcode.

A plan that has been made carries full weight. A plan still in preparation carries some, depending on how far it has got. The difference decides whether a policy is a rule you must satisfy or an argument you can answer.

Finding the designated neighbourhood area

Neighbourhood areas are designated by the local planning authority on application from a parish or town council, or from a neighbourhood forum in an unparished area. Designation comes first, before any policy is written, so an area can exist for years with no plan behind it.

Start with the council's website. Most authorities keep a page listing every designated area, the qualifying body, the current stage and links to documents. Where that page is out of date, the planning policy team will confirm the position by email, and a written confirmation is worth having on file.

Then check the national dataset. Designated neighbourhood area boundaries are published nationally, which is useful where a site sits close to a parish boundary or where the council's map is a low resolution image. Boundary questions matter, because a site split between two areas is subject to both plans.

Parish boundaries and neighbourhood area boundaries usually coincide but not always. Check the actual designated boundary rather than assuming the parish.

Made plans, submitted plans and drafts

The stages run in a fixed order, and each one changes the weight the plan carries.

Weight before a plan is made is a matter of judgement, and national policy sets out the factors: the stage of preparation, the extent of unresolved objections, and the degree of consistency with national policy. A plan that has passed examination and is waiting for a referendum date carries substantial weight. A first draft published for comment carries very little.

Check the examiner's report as well as the plan. Examiners frequently recommend modifications that change or delete policies, and a site owner reading the submission version can be arguing against wording that no longer exists.

Policies that commonly appear

Neighbourhood plans cannot allocate less housing than the local plan requires, and they cannot conflict with strategic policies. Within that, they tend to concentrate on the same handful of subjects.

• Design codes and materials palettes, often with detailed guidance on roof forms, boundary treatments and window proportions
• Settlement boundaries, sometimes drawn more tightly than the local plan
• Local Green Space designations
• Housing mix policies favouring smaller homes
• Protection of community facilities, shops and pubs
• Parking standards and highway safety on village lanes
• Views and landscape character, with specified viewpoints

Design policies are the ones that most often catch applicants. A neighbourhood plan design code carries the same weight as a local plan policy, and a scheme that ignores it will be recommended for refusal however good it looks in isolation. Address the code directly in a Planning Statement, policy by policy, rather than asserting general compliance.

Local Green Space and what it does

Local Green Space is a designation that neighbourhood plans can make, over land that is demonstrably special to the local community and holds particular local significance. It has to be reasonably close to the community it serves, local in character, and not an extensive tract of land.

The effect is strong. Policy for managing development in a Local Green Space is consistent with that for Green Belt, which means most development is inappropriate and needs very special circumstances. A field designated as Local Green Space is effectively off the table for housing.

Check for these designations early, because they are made at neighbourhood plan level and do not appear on the local plan policies map until it is next updated. The detail of what the designation blocks is covered in Local Green Space: the designation and its policy effect.

How a made plan interacts with the local plan

Once made, the neighbourhood plan sits alongside the local plan as part of the development plan. Where the two conflict, the later of the two prevails, which sometimes puts a recent neighbourhood plan ahead of an older local plan on a point of detail.

That relationship is more contested than it sounds, and it is worked through in neighbourhood plans: when they outrank the local plan. The related question of how to confirm a plan's status before relying on it is covered in checking whether a made neighbourhood plan applies.

National policy also gives recently made neighbourhood plans a degree of protection where the authority cannot demonstrate a five year housing land supply, provided the plan contains policies and allocations meeting the identified housing requirement. The wording and the qualifying conditions have changed between Framework editions, so read the current text rather than relying on a remembered paragraph.

Getting involved while a plan is being written

If a plan covering your site is in preparation, the time to engage is during the pre-submission consultation rather than at examination. Qualifying bodies are required to consult on the draft for six weeks, and representations made then are considered before the plan is submitted.

Landowners often stay quiet at that stage and then object at the submission consultation, which is later and harder. By then the group has invested a year in the wording and the examiner's remit is limited to whether the plan meets the basic conditions rather than whether it is the best plan available.

Write to the qualifying body directly as well as through the formal consultation. Parish groups are volunteers, and a landowner who turns up with a site assessment and an offer to discuss is treated very differently from one who sends a solicitor's letter after the referendum.

Where your site is proposed for a restrictive designation, the practical response is evidence. A Local Green Space designation has to meet defined tests, and showing that the land is an extensive tract, or is not demonstrably special to the community, is an argument the examiner can act on.

The levy share that follows a made plan

There is a financial consequence that parish councils care about a great deal. Where a neighbourhood plan has been made, the parish or town council receives a larger share of the Community Infrastructure Levy collected from development in its area, and that share is uncapped. Without a made plan the share is smaller and subject to a cap related to the number of council tax dwellings.

For a parish facing significant development, that difference funds real projects. It is also why some plans are progressed quickly with thin evidence, and why examiners sometimes strip out policies that go beyond what the evidence supports.

Applicants should read the plan with that in mind. A policy backed by a character appraisal, a housing needs survey and a design code is a policy that will be applied. A policy asserting a local preference with nothing behind it is one an inspector may give little weight, though the council will still apply it until someone tests it.

Start with the two searches, print the made plan, and read the policies that apply to your site before the first sketch.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.