Governance and Community Engagement
The current members of the Steering Committee are
The Southborough and High Brooms Neighbourhood Development Plan is a planning and land-use document setting out the community’s aspirations for Southborough and High Brooms over the period 2024 to 2038. It has been prepared in accordance with the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, the Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, the Localism Act 2011 and the Neighbourhood Development Planning Regulations 2012 (as amended).
Neighbourhood planning enables communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and work. In June 2023 Southborough Town Council applied to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, the local planning authority, for Southborough and High Brooms to be designated as a neighbourhood area. The application was approved in August 2023.
The neighbourhood plan area shares its boundary with the civil parish of Southborough but the plan has been named to reflect the two primary communities – Southborough and High Brooms. Southborough Town Council is responsible for the development of the neighbourhood plan, its implementation and its maintenance. To develop the plan they appointed a steering committee consisting of town councillors and volunteers from the community. The steering committee Terms of Reference and current membership of the group can be found in the attached documents. A Planning Consultant and a Community Engagement Advisor were also appointed to guide and support the steering group through the process and additional support has been received from AECOM (Infrastructure Consultants).
Engagement with the wider community in Southborough and High Brooms has underpinned the development of our neighbourhood plan. Initial face-to-face sessions in September and October 2023 at local venues were used to understand the community’s views of area and their aspirations for the future.
Documents
Governance
Community Engagement
A Visioning Workshop in January 2024 built on these views to develop a vision, series of objectives and a set of themes for the neighbourhood plan. Further presentations, mapping workshops, business events and community exhibitions followed. A printed leaflet giving a high level summary of the points raised was distributed to homes and businesses in the area, inviting them to provide feedback through an online survey to further inform the plan development. All of the above have formed the basis for the current draft of the plan.
Following approval by Southborough Town Council, this draft neighbourhood plan - the Pre-Submission Version for consultation at Regulation 14 - was released on 9 December 2024 for an eight-week public consultation period. A printed copy of the plan and response sheets have been made available at the Southborough Library for those who do not have access to the online consultation. Community engagement with the consultation is being promoted through leaflets and posters at key locations in the area, in local publications and steering group members attendance at local community events.
All responses to the consultation will be reviewed by the steering group and adjustments made to the neighbourhood plan as appropriate and with the approval of Southborough Town Council to form the Submission Version (Regulation 16). This will be handed to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council who will manage the remaining stages of the process, including a further public consultation, the formal examination of the plan by a planning inspector and a referendum on adoption of the plan.
A neighbourhood plan attains the same legal status as a local plan (and other documents that form part of the statutory development plan) once it has been approved at a referendum. At this point it comes into force as part of the statutory development plan. Applications for planning permission must be determined in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise.
Further details will be added to this page as our neighbourhood plan progresses through these stages.