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The Big Society Is Here in Taplow
Following the demise of Regional Planning, the over-centralised planning system that had evolved to become an instrument of national social engineering rather than a system for serving the needs of local communities, the local authorities found themselves adrift in a sea of indecision whilst the new government attempted to replace some 1,200 pages of planning procedures and regulations with something more flexible and, above all, simpler. The ‘something’ that emerged was labelled the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which was floated upon this sea of indecision as the instrument of national planning to replace the previous instrument of national planning, but with a difference. The key difference was that the NPPF was not a set of detailed prescriptive rules but instead a set of policies that meant that the 1,200 pages were reduced to about 50. The underlying principle is an attempt to delegate planning decisions back to the local community affected by the decision. However, while the previous over-prescriptive system was a labyrinth of scarcely understood regulations, its replacement with its over-simplified set of policies set off a storm of protest about its key assumption in favour of sustainable development and quickly became known as a developer’s charter. The NPPF reads a bit like the European Code Napoleon where there is a presumption of guilt and the accused are required to prove their own innocence, as opposed to the British system where there is a presumption of innocence, except in this case the default presumption is approval unless the locals affected by a planning proposal can make a case for its refusal. The scales of justice seem to be weighed in the developer’s favour. The major risks in the document are that the Green Belt protection is severely weakened and that there could be a wave of untrammelled development allowed in rural areas generally. Many major amenity organisations have been lobbying the government to change this document to better reflect the needs of the country as a whole rather than just the urban dwellers. The NPPF is just a set of policies that appeared to be aimed at kick-starting the economy just by building houses, but to provide the legal basis for the realisation of the ‘Big Society’ the Localisation Bill was approved in November last year. The purpose of this Act is to introduce new rights and powers to allow local communities to shape new development by coming together to prepare Neighbourhood Plans that would have allowed local input to the location of shops, offices, schools and even in setting standards for the design of new buildings. You will recall that Taplow did produce such a plan in 2005 called the Taplow Parish Plan which was the outcome of the initiative of your Society and essentially masterminded by Bernard and Mary Trevallion during which significant polling of opinion around the parish was carried out, but it was never granted the privileged status of being accepted as a Supplementary Planning Document. The SPD status would have meant that its contents (the wishes of Taplow residents) would have been a material factor in SBDC’s decisions about planning proposal in our area. Two types of bodies – town, or parish, councils and ‘neighbourhood forums’ - can prepare a Neighbourhood Plan. Neighbourhood forums are community groups designated to take forward neighbourhood planning in areas without a parish council. It is a new role of the local planning authority to agree who should create a Forum for a given area. It is assumed that since we do have a parish council that it will be the focus for creating our Neighbourhood Plan. Assuming we didn’t have a parish council then the criteria for establishing a neighbourhood forum are being kept as simple as possible to encourage new and existing residents’ organisations, voluntary and other community groups to put themselves forward to (say) the SBDC as candidates. In an important change to the planning system communities can use neighbourhood planning to permit the proposed development they want to see - either in full or in outline – without the need for a formal planning application. These are called Neighbourhood Development Orders. The SBDC will continue to produce development plans that will set the strategic context within which neighbourhood plans will sit, for instance the South Bucks Core Strategy. Interestingly, neighbourhood development plans or orders do not take effect unless there is a majority of support in a local referendum that introduces a completely new element into the community at parish level. However, these neighbourhood plans have to meet a number of conditions before they can be put to a community referendum and legally come into force. These conditions, we are told, are to ensure plans are legally compliant and take account of wider policy restrictions. These conditions are:- They must have regard to national planning policies (the NPPF?)
- They must be in general conformity with the SBDC Core Strategy
- They must be compatible with EU obligations and human rights requirements (!)
- An independent qualified person must check that these conditions are met before submission to a referendum.