NDP

EXPLANATION OF OAKLEY HOUSING ALLOCATION

• The government has said through the National Planning Policy Framework that all Local Plans must contain housing growth.
• All Neighbourhood Plans also need to show growth if required by the Local Authority in our case, Bedford Borough.
• If there is not an up to date Local Plan all growth is uncontrolled and any landowner and developer can submit plans and if turned down, they can appeal and at appeal permission.
• The Borough Local Plan comes to an end in 2021 and therefore there is a need for a new one. The Borough is at present going through the process of producing a plan from 2021 to 2035.
• The Borough through this process had a consultant assess housing need in the Borough.
• The Borough then looked to the urban and rural area for where growth should be sited with the largest amount in the urban area, the rest in the villages.
• Oakley was designated a category 2 village and was allocated between 25-50 houses.
• Oakley had already started its Neighbourhood Plan so that the village could manage any growth proposed for the village.
• At consultation events residents supported the need for more housing in Oakley. The preference was between 20-50 dwellings.
• Residents also showed a preference for small developments (10-/+) rather than one big one.
• At consultation all residents were concerned about traffic and resources, as no development site is free of these issues.
• Oakley Parish Council commissioned a housing survey which stated there was a need for approximately 40 houses.
• All the sites put forward by developers/landowners were audited by a consultant commissioned by the Parish Council, and those results set against the Village Road Assessment and our policies.
• There were two possible sites that met the criteria.

The Parish Council and the Neighbourhood Development Plan Group when considering all these issues have selected these two sites, one of 20 houses and one of 30 houses to have the least impact on Oakley as a whole.

The two sites still need planning permission, must comply with the Neighbourhood Plan, the Borough Local Plan and the Government National Planning Framework and address such issues as drainage, highways, landscaping etc.

The Parish Council and the Neighbourhood Development Plan Group have, by making a balanced assessment of the sites always recognised the impact on individual residents. Their judgement was based on what the residents told us, the planning system from government, the impact on individual residents and the impact on the whole village. If we do not as a village manage the growth, then growth will still be imposed on us but we will have no influence over where it is located or what it looks like, this will be decided by the Borough Council.

DEVELOPER PLANS FOR PROPOSED SITES

SITE LAYOUTS ARE INDICATIVE ONLY AND THAT TYPE, SIZE, ETC OF DWELLINGS HAS NOT YET BEEN DETERMINED