On Monday, January 13 Rye Town Council’s Planning and Townscape Committee heard about the latest work on the review of the Rye Neighbourhood Plan. The meeting at the town hall also discussed prospects for planning policy in 2025.
The Neighbourhood Plan
Rye Town Council has updated its website to reflect work completed during the Christmas break. The site now shows the final reviewed Neighbourhood Plan alongside a “red ink” version which reveals the text that has been revised.
In addition to a record of all the related work and consultations by the Steering Group in the last 18 months, there are 75 pages of public and statutory representations, received in October and November 2024, on the reviewed plan. All those comments that have been judged relevant have been reflected in the revised version.
Rye Town Council formally agreed on December 9 2024 to submit the work to Rother DC for the next stage of the review, which will involve more scrutiny, a further consultation and an examination by a national planning inspector. Once that is done, it will be decided whether the revised plan needs to go back for local referendum or be accepted as a revised final plan. More on this in due course.
Higher level developments
As 2025 will see significant changes in planning policy, the work on the Neighbourhood Plan review has taken account of emerging changes.
First, the government published a revised National Planning Policy Framework at the end of 2024. This sets the upper level of planning policy to which all other plans have to conform. There are multiple changes which reverse much of previous government’s stance on matters such as Green Belt and the so called Grey Belt (neither apply to Rye) but importantly a significant increase (by on average 20%) to mandatory housing targets. The changes have been reflected in the revised Neighbourhood Plan as from early work it has been calculated that Rye could accommodate the likely new targets on the sites already allocated.
Second, there is new national policy focused on plan-making. This would be in the form of a new suite of National Development Management Policies (NDMPs), with a view to providing standing direction on a range of planning issues, such as handling climate change and avoiding the need for local plans to duplicated.
Thirdly, there has been much publicity about the government’s promise of 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. It was evident in recent government statements that there is reducing hope of delivering 300,000 homes by July. The Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted that the net supply of new homes this year will drop below 200,000. What we can expect to see is a rise in the number speculative planning applications by developers attempting to exploit the changes, particularly where authorities like Rother DC are working to update their own plans. There is concern that where planning committees resist any speculative development on sound planning grounds, such as environmental protection, flood risk, poor design or inappropriate housing mix, nimbyism could be cited and appeals initiated.
Fourthly, even if successful planning proposals increase, supply lines have yet to be greatly improved to meet an increased target of homes completed. In England, there are not enough construction workers, bricklayers and roofers – along with manufacturers and installers of air source heat pumps – to deliver a significant increase in volume.
Fifthly, there is requirement from early 2024: Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). This aims to leave the natural environment in a better state than before development took place. It stems from the Environment Act 2021, which made provisions in the Town & Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA 1990) to make planning permissions subject to a requirement to deliver BNG plus 10% from 12 February 2024. The concept is complex but in short, for each development, a calculation is made to see what biodiversity might be lost and then that loss plus 10% must be provided elsewhere on site or off site in the vicinity. BNG already applies to sites around Rye, such as the former Freda Gardham school, the former Lower School site off Ferry Road, and the former Tilling Green school.
Lastly, there is the government’s English Devolution Bill and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. On January 9, as you can read elsewhere in Rye News, Brighton and Hove with East and West Sussex County Councils opted to progress work towards a regional structure of existing authorities, perhaps overseen by an executive mayor. One of the responsibilities of any new “devolved” organisation would be housing and planning. As yet, details are sketchy, particularly about how a new planning structure might operate and in particular to deliver homes and related infrastructure any better or faster than at present.
The Rye Neighbourhood plan provides a very effective way of influencing future development locally in a sustainable way and one that best suits the community. There is some reassurance that nothing emerging suggests that neighbourhood plans would be dropped.
Image Credits: KT Bruce , Anthony Kimber/Ordnance Survey .