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Council guidance on neighbourhood planning

We work with Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity (BRCC) to help parish councils and neighbourhood forums undertaking neighbourhood planning.

Neighbourhood Planning - what the Council will do (PDF) contains detailed information on the neighbourhood planning process and what guidance we can offer.

Please contact planningpolicy@bedford.gov.uk if you require advice on writing a Neighbourhood Plan.

Mapping

We have a licensing agreement with Ordnance Survey allowing you to use and share maps our maps that contain its data. These maps must be published in their entirety with no information, including the copyright, removed or altered.

For neighbourhood planning purposes, we can provide an electronic map of the whole parish or ward as a PDF. It is scaled at A4 size, so it may become distorted if enlarged.

If you would like printed copies of the map, or any other maps, you will need to order these from Bedford Borough Council’s professional design and print service, or another printing company.

For information that the Planning Policy Team has mapped such as village or urban open spaces or the call for sites layer, please contact planningpolicy@bedford.gov.uk. We will supply the data in a shape file format (.shp) free of charge and you will need to load it into GIS software. 

Funding 

Funding is available from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to support you to prepare a Neighbourhood Plan.

See what funding is available and how to apply here: neighbourhoodplanning.org.

The cost of the examination and referendum for neighbourhood plans will be met by Bedford Borough Council.

Infrastructure issues

You will need to consider the necessary infrastructure when creating a Neighbourhood Plan, particularly when development sites are to be included as allocations.

This should include:

  • the additional infrastructure needed to cater for future development
  • how any additional infrastructure may be delivered
  • what the likely impact on proposed site allocations would be on the existing services

Please contact the infrastructure providers as soon as possible in the plan process. 

If there is an adopted Neighbourhood Development Plan, or Neighbourhood Development Order, this will have implications for the amount of funding for local infrastructure priorities that is passed to the parish councils (or to be used by the Council for local infrastructure priorities in unparished areas) from developments granted planning permission.

Parish councils currently receive 25% of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) charged on developments.

Historic environment

Neighbourhood Plan policies can help guide how locally-valued heritage can be sensitively protected and enhanced. See more information about considering the historic environment in your Neighbourhood Plan.

Further information and guidance available

Contact details

For further information, please contact planningpolicy@bedford.gov.uk