What can a Neighbourhood Plan (NP) achieve in my area of Birmingham?

NPs are powerful legal documents, but they can’t do everything your community may wish for. An NP when brought into force can only directly influence changes that relate to ‘land use planning’. That is: development needing planning permission.

What constitutes land use planning - and what doesn’t - can be tricky to understand. To help, we have listed scenarios under several themes to help you explore what an NP can and can’t legally influence. These are examples, neither exhaustive nor definitive, but they should give you a good idea of what your community could achieve with an NP.

Housing

A Neighbourhood Plan can…

  • An NP can be used to bring forward housing that reflects the needs of your community.

    Through an NP you can state the type and size of housing that is needed in your area. This includes the number of bedrooms, and whether the housing should be flats or terraced housing, and so on.

    For example: is there a local need for homes that are suitable for first-time buyers and families just starting out? If so, your NP policies could show a need for homes with fewer bedrooms, as they are more affordable.

    Have a look at Policy 2E of the Saham Toney Neighbourhood Plan from Norfolk. Data from the area shows there is a demand for smaller dwellings, to allow older people to downsize from their larger homes which in turn allows families to obtain larger homes. The policy seeks to address this by specifying, for example, that developments of fewer than ten homes should be made up of dwellings that are three bedrooms or fewer.

  • An NP can specify - as a percentage - how much of the new housing that comes forward in your area is affordable to meet the needs of your community.

    To go down this route, you will need lots of extra evidence in your NP to justify it and show that it is a viable policy. This means ensuring the percentage requirement isn’t so high that new housing is no longer profitable for a developer to build.

    While an NP can make new housing more affordable in the future, it can’t address affordability issues with housing that has already been built.

    See also: How to undertake a Housing Needs Assessment (HNA)

  • You can use an NP to specify where you want new housing to go in your area, through site allocations.

    Check out Policy BH 15 of the Balsall Heath Neighbourhood Plan, which allocates a site for mixed-use development (including housing), to regenerate the site of a former college.

    See also STRAD3 of the Stradbroke Neighbourhood Plan from Suffolk. This plan not only specifies where new development should go, it sets out how many homes per site, and the mix of land use on each site, including community use and green space.

    Birmingham City Council may already have places earmarked in your area for new housing. You can specify even more sites for more housing, if you have found a need for it.

  • Birmingham City Council already has planning policies relating to HMOs. However, you can use your NP to put further safeguards in place to ensure - where planning permission is required - a conversion from a house into an HMO is sensible and appropriate.

    For example: ensuring appropriate parking, cycle and bin provision and making sure that the design, layout and intensity of the use would not have adverse impacts on people living nearby.

    You won’t be able to use an NP to reduce the number of existing HMOs. If you are experiencing issues associated with those, get in touch with Birmingham City Council: Private Rented Services.

    *See Birmingham City Council’s definition of an HMO.

“Allocating sites for housing in your area through a Neighbourhood Plan really helps put your community in control. It means you can direct new housing to sensible locations and make sure they’re well connected to existing facilities”

- Francis Shaw, Locality. 

Good design and protecting local character / buildings

A Neighbourhood Plan can…

  • Through an NP you can put in place detailed guidance and specific parameters (called design guidance and codes) that new developments must abide by in order to get planning permission. This can help protect your area from poorly designed developments, and encourage well-planned and functioning places that meet the needs of your community. It also helps protect and enhance the existing character of your area. 

    In your NP you could specify - for example - the typical number of storeys for new development, and the types of materials and colours to be used.

    Check out Policies HB5 to HB12 of the Hazelbury Bryan Neighbourhood Plan from North Dorset which outline how future development should be “designed to reinforce the distinctive local character of the settlement or outlying rural area to which it relates”.

  • An NP can help protect buildings that are important to the community for their heritage value. Many of the buildings in your area which are important for their historic value may already be protected through (for example) classification as listed buildings. However, you can use an NP to identify and list locally important buildings with heritage value that aren’t already protected. By classing them as ‘non-designated heritage assets’ in your NP, you can afford them a degree of protection. This helps to, for example, reduce the likelihood of them ever being demolished.

  • You can use your NP to ensure that key views are not compromised by developments that may be built in the future. This could include protecting views of church spires, or other buildings of historic value that add to the character of your area, such as chimneys from historic factories. Protecting them can help maintain the sense of character of your area.

“Development should contribute to the Jewellery Quarter’s unique character and function, and demonstrate how it respects, conserves and enhances the existing scale and grain of the built environment, and the unique mixture of uses present. Proposals which support and enhance the variety of jewellery, design and making uses are encouraged”

- an extract from the draft Jewellery Quarter Neighbourhood Plan

Outside of Neighbourhood Planning you could explore:

  • You can nominate buildings or places that are important to local people as Assets of Community Value, giving the community a chance to raise funds to buy them before they are made available for private sale.

    Find out more about ACVs on Birmingham Community Matters’ website.

  • Community Asset Transfer enables community organisations to take on a long lease of a publicly owned building, allowing local people to invest in it and feel secure in its future.

    See Birmingham City Council’s Community Asset Transfer website.

  • You can request that Birmingham City Council designates a building, structure or feature as a ‘locally listed building’, in recognition of it being an “important part of Birmingham’s heritage due to its architectural, historic or archaeological significance”

  • West Midlands Historic Buildings Trust has joined forces with the City of Wolverhampton Regenerating Buildings Preservation Trust and the Worcestershire Building Preservation Trust to share knowledge and experience to save local heritage buildings at risk.

    You can contact them via wmhbt.org.uk.

  • Historic England has further guidance on saving a building.

Environment and green spaces

A Neighbourhood Plan can…

  • You can use an NP to designate green spaces in your area as Local Green Spaces. This can help safeguard those spaces from new development over the lifetime of the NP.

    You could protect sites because of their wildlife value, or because of their recreational value (for example - the community uses them for walking dogs or playing sports and so on).

    Some of your neighbourhood’s green spaces may already be suitably protected, but for those that aren’t, designating sites as Local Green Spaces can be very powerful.

    Check out Policy NPP 8 of the 3Bs Neighbourhood Plan from here in Birmingham. It protects four sites - known as Barr Bank, New Perry Wood, Rocky Lane and St Pauls Green - from development through designating them as Local Green Spaces.

  • You can use your NP to protect against the loss of valued trees and to protect ecological value. For example: through improving ‘green corridors’ (links used by wildlife that connect to larger open spaces).

    Have a look at policy CS G11 of the Camley Street Neighbourhood Plan from London. This plan sets out a range of measures to protect and enhance existing open space. It also specifies that contributions from developers building in the area should go towards the greening of the area.

  • You can reduce the risk of flooding by using your NP to put sensible measures in place. If a new development is likely to have an impact on drainage, you can require that it helps to mitigate against the risk of flooding in the area by having sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS). SuDS can collect and store rainwater, releasing it in a controlled way to avoid flooding.

    Check out Policy NPP6 of the 3Bs Neighbourhood Plan from here in Birmingham. It requires any new development that has an impact on drainage, and requires planning permission, to meet the requirements of SuDS guidelines set out in the NP.

“Development that would have an adverse impact on the openness and special character of these Local Green Spaces will not be supported except in very special circumstances (in accordance with national policy)” - an extract from the 3Bs Neighbourhood Plan. 

Outside of Neighbourhood Planning you could explore:

  • TPOs are designed to protect trees which are considered to be important to a local area.

    According to Birmingham City Council, they apply to trees that “may make an area visually more attractive or may be of historical significance. The order may cover anything from a single tree to woodlands. Hedgerow trees can be protected, but not hedges, bushes or shrubs”.

    Learn about tree preservation or request a TPO.

  • This is a group that meets regularly to - among other activities - share concerns and explore solutions for its local park or green space, advocate for its maintenance and protection, organise activity days and fundraising, and communicate plans and developments to the wider community.

    Birmingham Open Spaces Forum (BOSF) is a network bringing together people across our city with an interest in Birmingham’s parks and open spaces. It has a toolkit for starting a Friends group, including a constitution template.

    You can also talk to Birmingham Community Matters (BCM) - a charity that helps people to set up, run and grow small community organisations. The team there will have lots of ideas about how to get a Friends group up and running.

Regeneration and community facilities/infrastructure

A Neighbourhood Plan can…

  • Through an NP you can identify vacant and derelict sites for redevelopment, going as far as specifying the uses of the site - for example, residential and retail.

    This can be a useful way to breathe new life into your neighbourhood. It may also act as a catalyst for wider regeneration across your area.

  • You can use an NP to identify projects locally (such as libraries, new cycle routes, improvements to the public realm) that your community would like to see come forward through money from developer contributions.

    Developer contributions (usually in the form of what is known as community infrastructure levy or CIL) is money that developers must give to a council for building in the area. The money can then be fed into the local community to address a lack of facilities.

    All areas get a portion of these contributions (either directly or indirectly). This is called the ‘neighbourhood portion’ of CIL. In areas with NPs that have been brought into force, the neighbourhood portion increases, giving you more to direct towards community projects.

    Having a policy in your NP that sets out which projects your community would like this funding to go towards gives you power to bring those projects forward.

    Check out Policy DC1 of the Sudbury Town Neighbourhood Plan and Policy D1 of the Harlesden Neighbourhood Plan. These NPs in northwest London each list their wishes for prioritising the spending of developer contributions, citing - for example - new cycle routes, improvements to the pedestrian environment and even ‘provision of safe play space in the streets’.

    You might also want to have a look at the Newport Pagnell Neighbourhood Plan from Buckinghamshire. Policy NP2 specifies that a developer building on a large housing site must set aside land and money towards new schools and a local shopping centre linked with a health facility. Happily, it states also (under ‘Leisure and open space provision’) that as a result of “developer contributions from developments planned in the Neighbourhood Plan that have already taken place, significant improvements have been made to several parks and a new NEAP [Neighbourhood Play Area] has been built on the Chicheley Street Play Area”.

  • An NP can allocate sites for future housing development in well-connected areas, close to facilities such as shops and schools. This helps to reduce the need to travel by car, bus and train, making it easier for people to walk and cycle as they go about their daily routines.

    An NP can also invite new cycling routes by encouraging new developments to have a cycle network and sensible cycle storage. An NP can also specify that developer contributions (money collected by Birmingham City Council from a developer when building) could be used to fund the creation of cycle networks.

  • In some cases, you can use an NP to make shop fronts and shop signs look more consistent and in keeping with local character. Where permission is required to change shop fronts and shop signs, you can use design policies to specify what new signage and frontage should look like.

    It is worth noting that an NP can’t address existing issues with shop fronts, though. It cannot be used to compel shop owners to replace existing frontages.

A note on funding
Some examples on this page show how communities have used their NP to say how they would like developer contributions to be spent. That’s the money developers must give to a council for building in the area, which can then be fed into the local community, addressing a lack of facilities or infrastructure.

If your area has limited development coming forward, it will receive fewer developer contributions. So you may not be able to realise your proposed projects in this way. You may find it more fruitful to seek out grants instead. The funding page offers ideas.

Because Neighbourhood Plans relate to land use, they can’t grant every wish and solve every worry your community may have.

By talking with other people in your community, you may be able to find alternative solutions to bring about positive change where you live.

Other local problems

  • If dog fouling is an issue in public and communal places in your neighbourhood, then you could consider preventative measures. For example: installing signage and ‘poo’ bins. Birmingham City Council (BCC) might be able to help through installing signage and undertaking additional street cleansing.

    You can report dog fouling at the BCC website.

  • If litter and rubbish are an issue in your area, there are a number of things you can do. For example: organise a local litter-picking group with neighbours. You could also contact your local councillor(s) or/and raise the issue at a Ward Forum Meeting.

    If you think rubbish collection is inadequate, then you could also consider reaching out to Birmingham City Council (BCC) to discuss options.

  • If fly tipping is an issue, there are several things you could consider doing. For example: you could take preventative action to discourage it from happening in the first place. This could involve the installation of CCTV in hotspot areas; cutting shrubs back (if fly tipping is happening in a secluded area) to make the space feel less private and deter culprits; and the installation of ‘no fly tipping’ signage, which details fines and consequences. You can also report instances of fly tipping to BCC or use the FixMyStreet website

Instead of an NP, you could consider:

Travel and transport

  • An NP cannot bring about more frequent bus and train services. If this is something you are interested in, it might be worth speaking to local transport providers. It is worth remembering that it may not always be economically viable to increase the number of services, as there might not be enough users to sustain more services. With this in mind, it could be worth thinking about compromises. For example, could a peak time shuttle bus help? For support, contact Transport for West Midlands.

  • The speed limit on some residential roads and in some local centres in Birmingham has changed to 20mph.

    You can’t use an NP to lower speed limits in your area. If this is something you are interested in, then have a look at Birmingham City Council’s community groups’ toolkit under its 20mph: Slower is safer initiative.

  • ‘Rat running’ is when motorists, who are usually very familiar with the geography of an area, use residential side streets, car parks and other places not intended to be shortcuts, to avoid heavy traffic, signals or other obstacles.

    You can’t use an NP to specify where vehicles can and can’t travel in your area and at what time of the day. If this is something you want to address then it is worth speaking to the Highways team at Birmingham City Council.

    There are other interventions which might help you achieve your aims. For example: number plate recognition systems so that only residents can enter certain areas, or the introduction of one-way streets.

  • Birmingham City Council’s Places for People campaign is ‘about reducing the amount of traffic in residential neighbourhoods so that it is nicer to be outside and safer for people to walk and cycle, children to play, neighbours to chat’.

    Read about low traffic neighbourhoods under the Places for People programme.

Instead of an NP, you could explore:

A Neighbourhood Plan is not about stopping development. Development is inevitable. An NP is about putting you in control of development and empowering you to shape it. This includes making sure that housing developments that come forward are ones that people want to see, that meet the needs of the local community”

- Francis Shaw, Locality

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