Neighbourhood plan ambition

Maidenhead: Hope to create local planning guidelines

A new consultation has been launched into the possibility of a draft neighbourhood plan covering Maidenhead’s unparished areas.

A neighbourhood plan is designed to set out planning policy in further details and on a more local level than the Borough Local Plan, although it cannot directly challenge the BLP.

The Maidenhead Neighbourhood Forum group, which has been spearheading the idea for the plan, has applied for all seven unparished areas – Belmont, St Mary’s, Riverside, Furze Platt, Pinkneys Green, Boyn Hill, and Oldfield – to be included in the document.

The forum has also applied to the Royal Borough for the group to be formally designated as a neighbourhood forum for the purposes of preparing a neighbourhood plan for Maidenhead.

The council is running a six-week public consultation on the group’s proposals until Tuesday, December 6.

Councillor Phil Haseler, cabinet member for planning, parking, highways and transport, said: “Neighbourhood plans are concerned with use and development of

land, and may contain a vision, aims, planning policies and proposals for improving the area, and allocation of sites for specific kinds of development.

“There are already a number of adopted neighbourhood plans in the borough and their preparation is a multi-stage process, led by the forum or parish for the area.

“At this current early stage for Maidenhead, the consultation is purely on the proposals put forward by the group to firstly designate the unparished areas as one neighbourhood and secondly designate the group as the neighbourhood forum.

“In deciding this application, the council is keen to hear the views of people across Maidenhead on the proposed geographic area and the prospective forum.

“The council will then decide on both proposals, having considered the technical planning considerations set out in national practice guidance, legislation and the consultation responses.”

If a designation is made, no other organisation or body can be designated for that neighbourhood area until that designation expires or is withdrawn.

Visit consult.rbwm. gov.uk/portal or use the public access computers available at local libraries, where staff are able to help if needed to take part.

The group’s proposals and supporting documents are also available for inspection online and at Maidenhead and Boyn Grove Libraries, where paper response forms are available upon request.

Andrew Ingram, chair of the Maidenhead Neighbourhood Forum, said: “Maidenhead is the only part of the Royal Borough which does not yet have a neighbourhood plan, either in place or in development, and it’s where most of the growth is planned within RBWM. So we are very pleased that this statutory consultation has finally begun.

“Assuming we get designated, we will be asking people in Maidenhead for their views about the town’s future in planning terms.”