Council to talk to developers ahead of revised Neighbourhood Plan

A new Thame Neighbourhood Plan now seem ‘inevitable’ according to the Minutes of a meeting of Thame’s Neighbourhood Plan Continuity Committee, to be submitted to Thame Town Council this evening (20/06).

Windles’ award-winning building, Thame

The particular Minute, Neighourhood Plan Review / Amendments, states that ‘..it now seems inevitable that a fully revised Neighbourhood Plan would be required to be prepared over the next two years which while still allocating land for housing, employment and retail, would need to have more detail on specific infrastructure provision’.

“It would provide an opportunity to strengthen the existing Neighbourhood Plan, a lot of which would carry over into the new Plan,” the document goes on.

Members of the committee, under the chairmanship of Cllr Bob Austin, voted to lift the current moratorium on discussions with potential developers ‘to enable evidence to be gathered at a local level, rather than being left to the Planning Authority’. Members felt that if the current moratorium remained in place, the Town Council would be left ‘out of the loop’ and developers would talk directly to the District Planning Authority.

Under another Minute, Employment Land provision in Thame, it was noted that the main barrier to expansion by SMEs,(Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) in South Oxfordshire was the lack of suitable premises and so, it goes on: “The next Neighbourhood Plan needs to reinforce policy and strategy for the implementation and promotion of deliverable employment sites and regeneration of existing sites.

“The new Local Plan still only allocated 2ha of employment land to Thame. There is a need to establish an evidence base which includes provision for employment land lost through permitted development since 2011, as well as new provision. Given the success of the Groves and Windles site any new single employment site would need to be occupier led rather than developer led.

“Residential growth needs to grow hand-in-hand with that of employment to maintain an acceptable balance, keeping both in and out commuting at an acceptable level,” was the conclusion.