Neighbourhood Plan – Waddingham Council

Update 2 March 2020

At the moment there is an impasse in progressing the Neighbourhood Plan and progress is effectively stalled.

This is due to the fact that between the two Community Presentations some landowners claimed they had not seen the original Call for Sites.

A Neighbourhood Plan is intended to be community led and therefore it was decided that these additional sites would be included in the second Community Presentation for consideration by members of the community attending the event.

Unfortunately the members of the community who attended did not express any significant consensus on how the sites should be dealt with in the Neighbourhood Plan. At was also clear that some sections of the community did not fully understand the purpose of a Neighbourhood Plan, i.e. it is intended as a 15 year vision for Waddingham, and not as some believed a planning application. This fundamental misconception was propagated outside the Community Presentation resulting in some residents needing to be reassured.

In respect of housing development the Neighbourhood Plan provides an opportunity for the community to determine where future housing should be located within the village. The Central Lincolnshire Plan (CLP) sets a target for the number of houses that different village types are expected to accommodate over the lifespan of the CLP (the CLP is also subject to national housing targets).

The respondents to the original village survey were overwhelmingly in favour of restricting housing development to the minimum permitted.

The Neighbourhood Plan uses a community led process that allocates where these houses should be built. To achieve this the plan has to identify and allow the community to decide which sites are preferred. The inclusion of the additional sites means that there is an actual oversupply of land for development in Waddingham. The three most significant sites (typically >5 houses) in themselves provide 100% oversupply. These larger sites sit outside the ‘Village Developed Footprint’. It should be noted that the ‘Village Developed Footprint’ does not exist as a physical entity shown on any map. It is rather a set of principles/guideines (within the CLP) that an individual planning officer interprets in the context of any specific planning application. It is therefore our best interpretation of these principles and guidelines.

Less significant identified sites (<4 houses) do not provide sufficient capacity to meet the minimum requirements. These latter sites are typically within the ‘Village Developed Footprint’ and are usually referred to as infill. The intention was therefore not to attempt to allocate these infill sites but leave them down to individual planning applications.

The challenge is reconciling the village survey results with the potential oversupply by for example allocating all these sites for development. However without community consensus this is unlikely to satisfy all interested parties.

There is also a risk that different interested groups will all vote against the plan thus potentially jeopardising the referendum stage of the NP process. The Plan is currently suspended.