Under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, as amended by the Localism Act 2011, every local planning authority must consider valid applications to designate neighbourhood areas for the purposes of neighbourhood planning.
The local planning authority is required to assess whether a valid neighbourhood area application has been submitted; whether under section 61G of the Localism Act 2011 it is desirable to designate the whole of the parish area as a neighbourhood area and whether it is desirable to maintain existing neighbourhood area boundaries.
An application is valid where it meets the criteria for an application as established in Part 2, 5. – (1) of The Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012; the application submitted by High Legh Parish satisfies the necessary criteria.
Neighbourhood area applications submitted by parish councils may cover the entire parish; a local planning authority can exclude land from inclusion within a neighbourhood area, particularly where land is identified as of strategic importance to the local plan. Where the Council decides to exclude part of the submitted neighbourhood area, the council must use its powers of designation to secure that some of the area applied for is designated a neighbourhood area.
The emerging Cheshire East Core Strategy does not identify any areas within High Legh Parish as a strategic priority and there is no valid planning reason to exclude any part of the area from the designation applied for; existing legislation allows the Council to reconsider this position should a strategic need arise to do so.
Decision type: Non-key
Decision status: Recommendations Approved