Report by Senior Planning Officer (attached).

Council considered a report by the Senior Planning Policy Officer (circulated previously) regarding the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan.

The Senior Planning Policy Officer advised that Braunton Parish Council, as a Qualifying Body, had prepared a Neighbourhood Plan for the parish of Braunton. The draft Neighbourhood Plan was recently subject to examination and the Council was now required to formally consider the next steps.

She added that the report sought approval to modify the submission version of the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan in accordance with the recommendations of an independent examiner, and then to proceed to a local referendum that would determine if the Neighbourhood Plan should be “made” (adopted). If “made”, the Neighbourhood Plan would form part of the Council’s statutory development plan and be used alongside the North Devon and Torridge Local Plan (2011-2031) in determining planning applications in the parish of Braunton.

She drew Member’s attention to the following points:

·         Neighbourhood planning was a statutory planning document and formed part of the development plan.

·         When adopted, the plan would carry equal weight to the non-strategic policies contained within the Local Plan.

·         The decision to write a neighbourhood plan was at the discretion of the Parish Council and when preparing it there were set procedures that needed to be followed, which included:

Ø  Designating a neighbourhood planning area upon the request of the Parish Council.

Ø  The Parish Council was required to undertake community engagement and to draft the document which included various policies.

Ø  Public consultation then had to take place followed by an examination by an independent examiner, which would then be followed by a referendum and adoption of the neighbourhood plan by the local authority.

·         Braunton Neighbourhood plan had reached the end of the examination stage and the examiner’s report was received on 6^th July 2023 (Appendix 1).

·         The Council now had to decide whether to accept the recommendations prior to a referendum within the parish of Braunton.

·         Braunton Parish Council commenced work on the Neighbourhood Plan in 2016 when they designated their parish as a neighbourhood planning area.

·         Prior to drafting their policies, the Parish Council undertook a significant amount of engagement with the local community then undertook formal consultation on the draft plan in 2022.

·         Following the consultation, the Parish Council consider the responses and made changes to plan as necessary prior to formal submission to North Devon Council.

·         At that stage a further consultation was undertaken before it was sent to a neighbourhood planning examiner. The policies that were contained within the plan were at the discretion of the neighbourhood planning group when deciding which areas that they wanted to focus on.

·         Braunton had 43 policies within their neighbourhood plan on a range of matters.

·         Paragraphs 4.7 and 4.8 of the report set out what the examiner was required to consider and the report was attached at appendix A.

·         The examiner had concluded that there were some modifications to ensure that the neighbourhood plan met basic conditions.

She added that the examiner commented that the wider community and Braunton PC had spent time and energy in identifying the issues and objectives that they wished to be included in their plan and this sat at the heart of the localism agenda.

The Senior Planning Policy Officer echoed the examiners sentiment and explained how dedicated the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan Steering group had been over the last few years as it had been a huge challenge for a Parish Council to undertake and had involved a lot of work.

It was moved by Councillor Spear and seconded by Councillor Bell that the recommendations within the report be adopted.

RESOLVED, that:

(a)  That the recommendations and modifications proposed by the examiner in relation to the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan, as set out in the examiner’s report (Appendix 1) be accepted;

(b)  That the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan be amended to include:

(i)            the Proposed Modifications set out by the examiner in his report (Appendix to the examiner’s report); and

(ii)          any further changes of a minor nature necessary to address typographic, spelling and grammatical errors, improve clarity, adjustment to ensure plan wide consistency of terminology, presentational improvements, factual updates and updated information with regard to the status of the Neighbourhood Plan;

(c)   That the Braunton Neighbourhood Plan be agreed, as amended, proceeds to referendum, at a date yet to be determined;

(d)  That the geographical area for the referendum was the Braunton Neighbourhood Area (Civil Parish of Braunton); and

(e)  That the above decisions and associated reasons in a formal Decision Statement (draft Statement provided at Appendix 3) be published.

Councillor Spear thanked the Senior Planning Policy Officer for her detailed report and the hard work and dedication of Braunton Parish Council and officers from North Devon Council.