Didcot Neighbourhood Plan – Boundary Decision

The Council’s Planning and Development Committee has investigated the issues sufficiently to suggest that an ‘optimal’ Boundary for a Neighbourhood Plan would extend beyond the Didcot Parish Boundary. This is primarily due to the growth of the Garden Town area and its interdependence with Didcot Town.

The greatest advantages of a Neighbourhood Plan extending beyond Didcot Parish are that it would:

• benefit from the increased emphasis on local plans against the ‘presumptions in favour of sustainable development’, contained in the 2023 revisions of the National Planning Policy Framework, especially Paragraph 14
• provide a cost-efficient avenue for extending, amending or creating new aspects of existing and proposed Neighbourhood Plans as the new Joint Local Plan is being put in place by South Oxfordshire and Vale of the White Horse District Councils (NB: timing is important as the latest Plan is presumed to take precedence)
• provide a widened focus on Didcot and Garden Town amenities and community assets that Parish Councils are seeking to shelter against inappropriate development plans
• offer opportunities across Parishes for the adoption of ‘best practice’ elements of existing Neighbourhood Plans
• bring into play scale-level cost efficiencies and access to valuable technical support via the District Councils for Parishes adopting Neighbourhood Plans or revising existing Plans.

Didcot Council would prefer to have more rather than less time for discussing an optimal Boundary with other Councils. However, our process has suffered delay, and we have very recently been informed by SODC that if a Boundary is not able to be established within the next few weeks, we would miss registration of our Neighbourhood Plan before the ‘Window’ for the current Financial Year closes (NB: we have been told that this might happen before the calendar end of the FY, if/when available funding is exhausted).

We would love to hear back and discuss views and concerns however; we need to inform SODC how we propose to proceed by November. In order to do that we need a Resolution on the Boundary by our Planning and Development Committee on 29th October to go to Full Council for decision on 4th November.

We would therefore be obliged to hear further from you as soon as possible. We can be flexible and attend any meetings or arrange phone calls/remote meetings.

Thank you for your attention and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kelly Morrison, Acting Chair, Didcot Town Council

Further information on Didcot Garden Town can be found on the SODC website