First, another big thank you to all the individuals and village organisations who helped write the 2008-2011 Parish Plan.
The Parish Plan has been used by the Parish Council and Milton Keynes Council to give priority to the improvements that the village wanted. These have included major improvements to the Village Hall, Sports Ground and Play Area as well as a new parking area in Station Road, traffic calming, lorry movement restrictions, improvements to public transport and even the creation of this website. Funding for the requested safe crossing from the Carrington to the Village Hall has been provided by MKC and is now being considered as part of the general improvement around that area.
The Government intends to give much greater powers to communities in the Localism Bill which is now going through parliament. The government will introduce ‘Neighbourhood Plans’ which will be more formal than our Parish Plan. The Localism Bill will give communities a number of rights including the right to buy key neighbourhood assets and the right to build. Communities will be able to set development policy providing it fits with national and principal authority (MKC) plans.
Neighbourhood Plans will be subject to review by an external inspector and then they will be put to a referendum. If more than 50% of voters approve, then the planning aspects become law!
All this costs a lot of money and the parish council decided to apply to be a vanguard neighbourhood so that we could get a government grant of £20,000. There aren’t many vanguard neighbourhoods nationally but, with the support of MKC, Castlethorpe has become one of only four vanguard parishes in MK.
The guidelines for Neighbourhood Plans are still being finalised and we expect to start our new plan early in 2012. We hope that residents and village organisations will give the new Plan the same enthusiastic support given to our Parish Plan and of course that the new Plan will be as successful as the last.
