Neighbourhood Plan

After a great deal of work by a team of dedicated parishioners, the Crookham Village Neighbourhood Plan was submitted to Hart District Council for final approval in March 2020. Part of the reason for the delay in submitting the referendum version of our plan was the need to await the outcome of a legal challenge made by a Wilbur Developments to the Hook Neighbourhood Plan on their support for the maintenance of their the local gap. Following the resolution of this challenge in February 2020, we were able to complete our work and deal with the points made by the Planning Inspector during the examination of our plan the previous year, which included questioning our support for our local gaps.

We knew that the Covid-19 pandemic would have an impact on the approval of our plan for referendum and were prepared for some delay and so, we were not surprised that we had to wait until the Hart District Council Cabinet meeting held on 2 July 2020, before our plan was unanimously approved to proceed to referendum at the next available opportunity.

Normally, this referendum would be held within 8 weeks of the Cabinet

decision to proceed. However, due to COVID-19, in March last year the Government suspended all elections and referenda until at least 6 May 2021. To prevent neighbourhoods from being unduly disadvantaged by this suspension, the Government also updated its planning guidance so that where a decision had been made to send a plan to referendum, as it the case with the Crookham Village Neighbourhood Plan, that plan will attract ‘significant weight’ for decision-making purposes during the determination of planning applications.

In fact, by that time, our plan had already started to earn its keep. In the Cross Farm Appeal Inspector’s report issued in February 2020, we were pleased to see that despite noting that our Neighbourhood Plan carried limited weight, Mr. Clegg, the Inspector, quoted a number of our policies in support of his decision to refuse the Appeal.

Although it is now some time since we last saw any activity on our Neighbourhood Plan, we would ask that you don’t forget about the importance of it for our Parish. We will be asking for your support in May 2021 when the referendum is now due to be held. It is only by voting to accept the Crookham Village Neighbourhood Plan that you can ensure that we preserve our Parish for future generations.