Malpas Neighbourhood Plan

Landscape view of St Oswald's Church watching over the village

The Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan was formally adopted by Cheshire West and Chester Borough Council on 8th July 2015, following a 91.6% 'yes' vote at the public referendum on the 7th May 2015.

The Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan now forms part of the Development Plan for Cheshire West and Chester and its policies will be taken into account in local planning decisions.

The Plan took over three years of dedicated work by willing volunteers from within the local community, who worked to produce the Neighbourhood plan.

The Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, engaged planning consultants IBI Taylor Young for specialist support and were also been working closely with Cheshire West and Chester Council during the process.

Throughout the development of this plan a number of consultation events were held to obtain local residents feedback.
The Plan was then amended in response to this feedback to ensure the local community supported the plan and that it reflected their views on development in the Town.

The Neighbourhood Plan is a planning policy document that is valid until 2030 and allows the community to help shape the future of the area.

The key part of the Neighbourhood Plan are the Policies (Section 5).
This section provides planning policies which will help direct the future of the area, and is supported by wider aspirations.
It is structured around six key themes, which reflect the priorities of the local community:

• Homes for All
• Built Environment and Local Character
• Landscape Character and the Natural Environment
• Services and Facilities
• Supporting the Local Economy
• Transport and Communications

The document was structured to provide:

• an overview of Malpas and Overton in 2014;
• an explanation of the process used to produce the plan;
• a 'vision' and objectives for the area;
• effective and deliverable planning policies around the six key themes.

The Neighbourhood Plan is accompanied by a separate Evidence Base Summary document which provides a full picture of the area at 2014 and summarises documentary evidence from a range of sources.

Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan Update 2017

Thanks to hard work and financial support of a number of local residents, the Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan was the first Neighbourhood Plan (NP) to be made by Cheshire West and Chester Council following the two pilot projects.

Adopted after a 91.6% 'yes' vote at the public referendum in May 2015, the plan is still only one of twelve in existence in West Cheshire, and is proving valuable in helping to inform and shape development within the Malpas parish.

Now two years on and having been applied across some 200 planning applications, the Parish Council recognises its strengths and areas of the plan that would benefit from improvements.
So they have given support to undertake a formal review and update of the document.

The main reasons for review are:

• During examination of the NP by a planning inspector, certain draft policies were removed from the plan due to incorrect wording. (Green infrastructure and open spaces was one area.) A review will consider how these could now be included.
• There is a Government White Paper on Housing currently under consultation and includes proposals, that if made law, are likely to further relax planning rules and impact on settlement boundaries.
• Following the West Cheshire Parish Boundary reviews, the parish of Malpas has been expanded, resulting is a miss-alignment between the plan and the actual geography of the parish. The plan now needs to be revised to cover the former parishes of Wychough, Stockton, Newton by Malpas, Oldcastle and parts of Bradley.

The first step of the review is to pull together a new Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group.
Some members of the original Steering group have volunteered their support, but we also looking to recruit new individuals, who are keen to shape the areas future development.

Malpas and Overton Neighbourhood Plan update July 2022

The Malpas Neighbourhood Plan was approved in 2015.

This was one of the first to be developed and both the team who produced it and those who were scrutinising our work were new to the process.

The Parish Council (who supported the original project with both people and money) have decided that the Plan should now be updated; this:

• to acknowledge the amount of housing that has been constructed since 2015 and its impact on the village,
• to reflect the extension of the Parish boundary to include a number of outlying settlements,
• to place greater emphasis on environmental challenges and the need to counteract climate change.

The Government requires that Neighbourhood Plans are prepared by a team representing the community and this needs to include wider membership than just local Councillors.

Therefore there is a need to establish a new wider Steering Group to contribute to the rewriting of the Plan.

There is a mechanism for obtaining grants to pay for expertise to assist us in the analysis of community needs and in drafting the resulting Plan, but the ideas of what we wish to achieve should come from local residents.

A number of Parish Councillors who contributed to the original Plan are still involved, but we also need fresh ideas and challenges to past thinking.

The Parish Council has just agreed to hire a consultant to identify the areas of work necessary to bring the Plan up-to-date and the amount of effort that this would require.

This will allow us to apply for a grant for further support in the months ahead.

Councillor Mike Boxall is leading this work for the Council.

If anyone is interested in getting involved, I suggest that you have a look at our existing Plan and the review report from Lucy Hughes of Cheshire Community Action.

Once we have the next phase of Lucy's work (the high level plan of tasks), it would be a good time to get the new Steering Group together to establish how much time everyone has to offer and agree how we move forward.

If you are interested in learning more or joining the steering group then please contact myself or Mike ( contact details on PC website )

Chris Whitehurst
E-Mail: editor@malpascheshire.org
12th July 2022