Neighbourhood Plan

Map of Parish Boundary — Neighbourhood Plan Area

The Parish Council feel that a Neighbourhood Plan – driven by the local community – is the best way to ensure that any new development in the area is appropriate. To this end the PC applied to Babergh DC to define the NP area to match the parish boundary. This was confirmed by BDC on 26th July 2017 and the map can also be seen on the BDC website.

It’s important that people take as full a part as possible in the consultation on the Neighbourhood Plan in order to shape it for the future. With around 100 houses having been added recently in the Cromwell Fields (or Piggeries) development, and over 1100 to be added in the nearby Chilton Woods any new development should be in keeping with local needs. There are also a number of valuable heritage assets and a Conservation Area within the NP boundary, (the church of St. Lawrence is Grade 1 listed), so it will be important to give these due consideration to protect them for future generations.

Historic England has some useful information on the importance of the historic environment in the neighbourhood planning process.

November 2019

Following the election of new Councillors and the new Parish Council the Great Waldingfield Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee has been reinstated. The Chairman of this Committee is Councillor Clare Kiely. Clare is working hard with colleagues to progress the emerging Plan. The first Meeting of the new Neighbourhood Plan Steering Committee was held on the 31st October 2019. One of the next steps for the Steering Committee is to start to engage and work with local resident Supporters.

Builder says building more homes is not the solution

Peter Redfern, CEO of Taylor Wimpey (3rd largest house builder in the country) was commissioned in late 2015 to produce a report reviewing the decline in home ownership. The review was published in November 2016, and the author criticised government targets which distracted from the aims of creating a stable and accessible housing market, adding that building more houses was not the solution.

Government confusing “housing demand” for “housing need”

A poll by the CPRE in 2017 showed that only 5% of people thought that national government was doing a good job of assessing local housing need. The CPRE produced a report which shows that local councils are concentrating more on numbers of houses rather than types, the consequence being that the wrong types of houses are being built for the actual demand. The report shows how government could separate need from demand and hence solve the housing problem more effectively. Please follow this link for more information and a link to the report.