Neighbourhood plan

Neighbourhood planning enables communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and work and in supporting new development proposals.

This is because unlike the parish, village or town plans that communities may have prepared, a neighbourhood plan forms part of the development plan and sits alongside the local plan prepared by the local planning authority. Decisions on planning applications will be made using both the local plan and the neighbourhood plan, and any other material considerations.

Neighbourhood planning provides the opportunity for communities to set out a positive vision for how they want their community to develop over the next 10, 15, 20 years in ways that meet identified local need and make sense for local people. They can put in place planning policies that will help deliver that vision or grant planning permission for the development they want to see.

In 2018, North Marston Parish Council decided to produce a Neighbourhood Plan which would seek to balance the likely need for small-scale sustainable development to maintain the village’s future viability with the definite need to conserve and enhance the rural character of the parish with its surrounding countryside, and the heritage of the village’s famous historical past, both of which play such an important part in the daily life of the community.

The North Marston Neighbourhood Plan was adopted by the Parish in a referendum in February 2023. You can see the full plan below, along with various documentation to demonstrate the process that was followed to deliver this outcome.