Can a Town Clerk limit exploration of a joint Neighbourhood Plan with surrounding Parishes voted for with Budget?

Question

Town Clerk says expenditures on an NP investigation voted with funding by Full Cuncil (in a designated Garden Town Area) cannot 'fall outside' the Parish.

Answer 1

it rather depends upon whether your designated area for your plan has been approved by your county council/principal authority.  If the area has already been set, you can't change it but if you are just starting out and haven't started the formal documentation bit yet, you can join with other parishes but be aware that adding neighbouring parishes increases the workload and cost, particularly of the consultation exercises you need to carry out.  The neighbouring parishes will need to agree to and fund their portion of the costs.

Comments

Thank you. Full Council has resolved (unanimously) to explore an NP and its 'optimal' Boundary, That entails discussions with neighbouring Parishes. A Budget has also been resolved by FC. We have yet to set the Boundary, but at least one and perhaps as many as three Parishes are looking to join. We have no intention of paying costs for others. But our TC - who has repeatedly delayed getting this far - now contends Financial Regulations prohibit our Budget being spent 'outside' our Statutory Parish boundaries. In the past our Parish has (e.g.) spent money buying land that falls into another Parish in order to share woodland and green space. Currently, we have a contract for cutting grass verges with non-Parish contractors. Etc, etc.

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Neighbourhood plans are stupidly expensive and of questionable value these days as the current government are determined to change the entire planning system.  They are also a huge amount of work, require the parish to work with planning experts (unless the parish is very small) and require the commissioning of a variety of documents such as habitats assessments, etc. which can themselves be expensive.  Multiple public consultations are required and the formula you must follow is prescriptive.  If you don't follow the process set out, the independent external examiner will throw the draft plan back at you before you can get to referendum which of course you then have to pass.  You also need the active support of your principal authority planning team.  Just getting started is almost certainly going to require a good deal of education, training and research by who ever is leading on the project.  You may have allocated a budget but, ignoring any questions about how or when that budget is spent, there are very many ducks to get in a row before any clear progress is seen.