Neighbourhood Plan: Your chance to have a say on the future of Penzance

After a lot of planning and preparations the Neighbourhood Plan will publicly launch this weekend

 in Penzance town centre. It is your chance to have your say on the future development of the Penzance area. For decades it has always been the way that a select few would decide what was built, where and under what design. A Neighbourhood Plan turns this all on it's head and puts people in charge and makes planning officers, politicians and developers have to listen to people.

The process will take a long time, it will be a thorough consultation, ending in a referendum of all the residents of Penzance parish (i.e. Eastern Green, Gulval, Heamoor, Penzance, Newlyn, Mousehole and Paul). To find out more there will be a pop up shop opening in the town centre this saturday, in the old travel agents on Market Jew Street near the Humphry Davy statue. opening hours will be saturday's 11 am - 3 pm, thursdays 4 pm- 7pm, fridays 11am- 3pm.

As one of the town council's representatives on the board, I'm very pleased with the work done so far. I'm delighted that the pop up shop will be an interactive exhibition, it's there to get people' opinions, whether that's on particular sites or a blank canvas. If you've ever wanted a greater say on Penzance and it's future development now is your opportunity.

The Penzance plan starts here, with myself on the board!

This is of course the neighbourhood plan for Penzance, more properly and in the words of a former Cornwall Council planner (Andy England) the process of 'planning for a plan' is well and truly in the offing. Last night at the town council I was elected onto the Penzance Neighbourhood Plan Board. Regular readers of the blog will now I have written on this subject before, back in October last year Should Penzance create a Neighbourhood Development Plan? I think it gives my initial views on the process and also some of the limitations I think it holds. For a more generic description try this from the DCLG.

Briefly a Neighbourhood Plan (NP) guides and informs planning decisions for the length of the plan (typically 20 years). Within the constraints of planning law (i.e. the National Planning Policy Framework) and the local plan (currently being devised by Cornwall Council). Unlike those policies that have already decided crucial matters like number of houses the NP will have the constraint and the advantage of being borne from the community. Although Penzance Town Council has started this process and will work with others it is not our plan, it is the communities plan. The whole process is punctuated by public consultations and then at the end a public referendum. There is a lot of talk about localism at the moment and giving local communities the say on key decisions, the Neighbourhood Plan is one of the few examples of this happening.

I think it would be very easy to underestimate the scale and importance of this task. Simple old fashioned public consultations won't cut it, listening only to consultants or solely to those that shout loudest could mean the plan will be doomed to failure at referendum, it is imperative the vast majority of the public are involved in the process. So it will be a great deal of work but will be better for it.

Policies outlined in Penzance's plan will become planning law. I'm sure any of us could look around the town (or indeed anywhere else) and see planning decisions that for better or worse have changed the fundamental nature of the place. For example, what if planners had never allowed the harbour to be filled in for a car park? what if your local park or green space had been built upon? It's easy to see planning policies as words on a piece of paper but the decisions taken in the plan will help shape the future of our community. I know many of you will be reading this well aware of planning policies you do and don't like, but I do hope there are others reading this now (and in the future of the process) that will think about how planning effects themselves and their neighbourhoods and what they'd like to see from it.

So what is the board? Well firstly it has been named the Penzance Neighbourhood Plan Board and its job is Governance and Management of the NP process. To be more exact:

"Establishing an appropriate governance and management structure - The Penzance Neighbourhood Plan Board (PNPB) and a Project Manager - is critical to the success of the NP. The PNPB will oversee the NP's development, dissemination and community consultation and ensure that the process complies with its statutory duties."

The first task of the PNPB will be to make an application to central government for grant funding for the first stage. From there it is imperative to create a communication and engagement strategy and start the long process of getting people involved in the decisions!

I don't have a great deal left to say at this point. This is a huge task and it will go on for a long time and I'm not even sure how long that will be. I've a lot to learn about a lot of things which really excites me. I'm really looking forward to the challenge and all that is left to say is a thank you to my fellow town councillors that showed faith in me and voted me on to the board. I hope I live up to the expectations.

Should Penzance create a Neighbourhood Development Plan?

Last week I attended a training session hosted jointly by Cornwall Council and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) about the subject of Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDP). Here I want to outline objectively what this process is and whether this part of the world ought to set to this task or indeed not.

The main thrust of NDPs is localism they were introduced as part of the localism bill, with the view to
handing local authorities and local communities more power and say in planning the future of their area. Something I greatly agree in, I think the future of Penzance should be more powers and services devolved to the local level and less reliance on distant decision makers. So at the outset the whole process is very attractive to me and my view of politics.

So what is a Neighbourhood Development Plan? It's a bit of a slippery eel when it comes to definition. It's ultimately up to those who work through it, consulted on it and ultimately who vote on it, what it is.  In broad terms it is a plan to direct development, the NDP when (and if) adopted, becomes part of planning law. The area that it applies to has to be decided it could be part of a parish, a number of parishes and everywhere in between. So it's a very important document when finished with potentially wide ranging implications for the future development of an area so quite rightly it's a long and stringent process of careful consideration, consultation, inspection and culminates in a public referendum. This process takes at least 12 months. The flip side of that is that it is a very long and expensive process and there is a very real risk that if public consultation is not robust or that local politicians or the media aren't behind the proposed NDP it will fail at referendum. (The referendum is won or lost on a simple majority of those that go to the polls).

The process of NDP, taken from Wivenhoe Neighbourhood Plan website

The scope of a NDP is vast, even the length that it should apply is open ended, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. An NDP can be used in a number of different ways, it can be used in a 'positive' manner for example sites could be identified for housing or it could be used 'negatively' to safeguard sites from development. My understanding is that it doesn't have to be restricted to housing it can be used to guide and limit all development. So we could earmark sites for retail use or for industrial use, either to safeguard them in their present guise or to encourage developers to build such units in designated areas.

It strikes me that safeguarding or negatively outlining the limits of development is simpler (i.e. cheaper) than positively encouraging sites. For the simple reason that stating this field/ play park/ green/ allotment should not be built upon is self explanatory the only thing needed is to get consensus that this is off limits. Whereas positively identifying sites (hopefully not play parks, allotments or greens) becomes a lot more convoluted and expensive. It's not quite as simple as saying build on this land, it would have to be checked that this was lawful, that the landowner was agreeable, that there were adequate surveys. It would be no use stating we want 500 houses (for example) on these fields and nowhere else and then finding out those sites turned out to be an important habitat for protected animals or riddled with mine shafts or in some other way unsuitable for development.

So part of the scope is identifying or limiting sites for development but there are also potential design clauses for buildings and even the size of developments sites. It must be noted that a Neighbourhood Development Plan is as long or short as the community wishes, there is no limit on the number of policies. So for example the entirety of a plan could be all new builds need the highest levels of insulation. Or all new builds need solar panels on the roof. Or new houses have to use local granite. Or new developments can only be in clusters of 50 houses or 20 or 10 whichever. Or we don't want an out of town retail here and here. Also usefully the NDP can be used to set the number or ratio of affordable homes in future developments.

Now to the good bits, as well as giving local people a real say in development. One of the sweeteners for towns and parish councils and their communities is that the amount of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL: the renamed section 106) spend locally is greatly increased. (As a slight aside, the DCLG presentation had the figure of a 25% CIL for towns and parishes with a NDP and the planning officer was eager to note that Cornwall Council hadn't decided that ratio....). The NDP can have written into it, the priorities for such spending, which again lets us decide locally and democratically.

Finally the limits of NDP, it can not be used as a tool to limit development. It is local control but it does require to be 'in general agreement' with both the National Planning Policy Framework and the Cornwall Local Plan. The big issue here is that a NDP would have to be in line with the 'presumption in favour of sustainable development', it can't be used as a tool to say no to development generally and it has to accept the housing numbers that Cornwall Council wants. Which Penzance's Labour councilor Cornelius Olivier are currently trying to greatly increase (Call for extra 1,350 homes to be built in Penzance). This in a nutshell is localism, the big picture the number of houses, can be swayed by a few elected officials and officers yet to decide where they go requires a referendum, it's bonkers it really is.

I hope that summarises the scope of the Neighbourhood Development Plan scheme. It is an exciting opportunity for Penzance Town Council to step up and have a great say in the future direction of development. This alone I think is enough for us to seriously consider it. But there are serious considerations for us to consider, not only what scope we choose, whether Penzance develops it's own plan or works with neighbouring parishes and a whole host of questions and options. Whichever route we do choose if we do choose to do so, it is definite that this is a long and costly process. Do we want to concentrate a large part of our time in the next 12 months probably longer? Could councilors, the town clerk and staff do something more productive for the community instead in this time? Then there's the costs, Porthleven has announced they are to pursue a NDP with an estimated cost of 10 to 15 thousand pound. Depending on the scope of our plan and how we manage it, perhaps we'd be looking at double that budget perhaps even a lot more. Obviously we have a duty as councilors to make sure public money is well spent. Money in itself is a separate issue, should we cut services or perhaps raise the precept and thus council tax next year? I like the idea of a Neighborhood Development Plan I really do, but there's certainly a great deal to consider.

Any thoughts or comments let me know.