Campaigners, including Civic Voice, unsuccessfully urged the Government to back up its pledge to give added strength to neighbourhood planning, following a debate on the Housing and Planning Bill on Monday 9 May.
Civic Voice writes:
Planning minister Brandon Lewis once again rejected a Lords amendment tabled by Baroness Parminter to enable communities with a complete or emerging neighbourhood plan to appeal against decisions that conflicted with that plan. Citing his opposition to extending third party rights in the planning system, Mr Lewis achieved parliamentary support to reinstate the Government’s own amendment to support neighbourhood planning: a clause to ensure complete plans are referred to in decisions.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Civic Voice and the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) are disappointed that the Government has established a clause that adds nothing to standard practice, but are heartened by Mr Lewis’s pledge to ‘work with colleagues to ensure that neighbourhood plans enjoy the primacy that we intend them to have in planning law’.
The groups believe that ministers can and should work with supportive Conservative MPs, such as Nick Herbert, and supportive peers to give greater weight to neighbourhood planning. The groups argue that the secretary of state should incorporate the principles of a ‘neighbourhood right to be heard’, as also tabled (and subsequently withdrawn) by Baroness Parminter on Tuesday (10 May), into secondary legislation or existing planning policy.
See what CPRE, Civic Voice and NALC had to say on the CV website
