May, June, July 2025
We have a draft plan!! It is nearly 100 pages long and we believe it addresses all the concerns and aspirations that our community has highlighted through surveys, drop in events and comments. It still needs quite a bit of work – lots of tidying up to do and also final checking against national and local planning policy to ensure it is compliant – but we are looking forward to sharing it with everyone as soon as possible.
Loss of funding
It is a huge achievement to reach this point given all the other demands on our time and the fact that we are currently without funding. As previously reported, the government’s annual funding for supporting neighbourhood planning runs from 1 April-31 March. We have been waiting since 31 March for them to open up the applications for 2025-26 so we could apply for the final tranche of £8k usually available to groups like ours that are approaching the consultation and referendum stages. However, in mid June the Government announced that there will be no more funding – nothing at all, regardless of progress or expectation. This is a huge blow and, despite obvious pressures on the economy, very surprising. Given the amount of taxpayer money already invested in the creation of neighbourhood plans under the Localism Act, it seems wrong to frustrate the process in this way. It also penalises less affluent communities in particular and is bad news for local authorities who will now have to try and find the resource to help groups who cannot access professional support.
The Yorkshire Local Councils Association has consulted on the implications of the loss of funding with a view to lobbying for a reversal of the decision but no-one is very optimistic! We have also spoken to North Yorkshire Council which is looking into practical ways it can further assist groups but it cannot provide any direct funding.
The Parish Council has stepped in to pay our Planning Consultant for work already done on our draft plan and he has also very nobly offered a reduced rate to see us through the final stages. The Parish Council is planning to make an application to the Village Trust to ask it to share the costs so that we do not waste all the years of work which has already gone into this project.
So for now please bear with us but we hope to have the perfect early autumn reading available for you in a few weeks!
Sarah Aspinall on behalf of Parish Council and Neighbourhood Plan working group