Neighbourhood Plan

Stage 5 - Regulation 14 Pre-Submission

 

The Parish Council is currently running a consultation on the Neighbourhood Plan.

All relevant documentation including the Neighbourhood Plan, response questionnaires and associated documents are available on the tab on the right hand side of this page.

(Neighbourhood Plan Pre-submission Consultation and Neighbourhood Plan Pre-submission Response Questionnaire)

Update (December 2021)

Further information on the Neighbourhood Plan will be published here shortly along with previous documentation.

The Parish Council are moving into Pre-submission Regulation 14.

At this stage the Parish Council will hold a consultation with the community to obtain their thoughts on the current plan.

Dates of this consultation will be available here and in the Ixworth Magazine.

What is a Neighbourhood Plan

The 2011 Localism Act gave the community the opportunity to put in place a legally binding policy document called a Neighbourhood Plan which will be used to determine future planning decisions and shape any expansion.

What is a Neighbourhood Plan?

• It is a document created by the community that sets out planning policies for the neighbourhood area.  The planning policies within the plan are used to decide whether to approve planning applications.
• The plan is written by the local community, the people who know and love the area, rather than the Local Planning Authority
• The Plan is a powerful tool to ensure the community gets the right types of development in the right place.

What can we achieve through a Neighbourhood Plan?

• Develop a shared vision for our community
• Through an allocation process choose where new homes are built
• Identify what shops, offices and other development might be needed
• Identify and protect important local green spaces
• Influence what new buildings should look like
• Improve health and wellbeing through the provision of better community infrastructure
• Improve movement around the area

The combined population of Ixworth and Ixworth Thorpe is likely to grow significantly over the next 20 years.  The nationwide housing shortage requires all local authorities to deliver significant amounts of housing, which in turn requires communities to play their part in that.

Ixworth is currently a flourishing community with excellent facilities, and nobody wants that to change. However, the expansion of the village will put great pressure on existing facilities and services.  

Neighbourhood Plans elsewhere do seem to be effective vehicles whereby both District and County Council planners and developers are required to accurately reflect the policies prepared by the community when proposing and assessing development.

We passionately believe this is our best opportunity to influence how our community grows.

In the Autumn of 2017, the Council set up a working group of the Parish Council called The Neighbourhood Plan Working Group. As a working group of the Council it has defined Terms of Reference set out by the Council.  The group is made up of a mix of local volunteers and Parish Councillors.

The group over the next 2 ½ years made great progress, though there were some difficult times, and accomplished a lot, to the point of almost getting to the final draft.  Unfortunately, as all are aware Covid-19 pandemic struck in March 2020.  The Parish Council took the difficult decision to postpone all projects it was working on as all regulations on how, when and where Councils could operate were reassessed by the Government.

In 2020, regretfully some members of the group took the decision to resign from the group. The remaining members, Councillors and new members continued the work of the group and at the end of 2020 going into 2021 they are moving the plan forward.

The next stage has been to hold a second consultation on site allocations to be included within the plan.  The comments from this consultation will be collated and a decision will be made on which sites will be included within the plan. 

The final draft of the plan will then be written, the group will request approval of the Parish Council for final draft to be submitted to West Suffolk District Council.