Planning permissions are at the discretion of the local planning authority (LPA), For us the LPA is Lewes District Council. For applications within the parish the Parish Council is a consultee in the process, which means we can support or object to an application but do not have the power to give or refuse permission.
Lewes District Council as the LPA is obliged to create a Local Plan. The Local Plan is a statutory document prepared by local planning authorities to guide the development and use of land in their area. It sets out a vision for the future growth and development of a region, outlining policies and specific allocations for different types of land use, such as residential, commercial, industrial, green spaces, and infrastructure. Lewes did have a Local Plan which was meant to guide planning up to 2030 but this local plan was made ‘out of date’ by the government in 2018/19. Plumpton Parish also has a Neighbourhood Plan but since neighbourhood plans are dependent on a local district plan the changes to the rules meant that our neighbourhood plan was also considerably weakened. In other words, local democracy in planning was deemed inconvenient by the then government and indeed the new government has unfortunately doubled down on this attitude.
Lewes District Council are currently working on a new district plan and are about to go into another phase of consultation. Once the new Local District Plan is ‘made’ i.e. approved by the Planning Inspectorate and approved by the full council at Lewes, then we can start to form our new Plumpton Parish Neighbourhood Plan which should in theory, barring any change in policy, give us some protection against speculative developments.
