December 4th will see the referendum on the West Saltdean Neighbourhood Plan. Hopefully, the vote will secure the Neighbourhood Plan till 2030 along with its local design policies and uplift in funding for local community projects (up from 15% to 25% if the plan is agreed). A big well done to all those who have helped with it’s development.
The plan has taken about three years to progress through twelve stages of regulations, and while Brighton Planning has assisted with the technical support of the plan, we wouldn’t have been able to do it, without the Neighbourhood Forum securing funding from Government to meet the costs. Unfortunately, after ten years of neighbourhood planning, the Government announced in June that financial support would no longer be available and in real terms this will mean the end of Neighbourhood Plans.
This begs the question as to what next. It’s long be proven that grass roots planning is an essential part of community development and inclusion, and prior to neighbourhood planning we had an informal system of community development plans, village design guides, supplementary design guidance. My guess is that is in the short term, Local Government Reorganization (LGR) will mean a series of community asset transfers as District and Borough councils seek to move over community assets prior to becoming a unitary authority. It may well benefit local communities to devise a list of their local council buildings and land and seek for the asset to transferred if it can benefit the local area, and there is funding to do so.
In the longer term I think new unitary authorities will use digital software to engage and consult residents on plans and forthcoming schemes. This will probably need communities to organize themselves in such a way as to be able to monitor websites and come together informally to brainstorm and respond on a relatively quick timescale.
If you’re interested in community planning and some of tools and techniques that are available to help communities through this transient time, then please do contact us.
https://wsnf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/wsnp-final.pdf/