Your Village, Our Future!
We Need Your Help to Develop a Neighbourhood Plan
Why this is important?
As the Parish Council we are keen to develop and maintain facilities which improve life for everyone in Meldreth (a look at everything we do is at What have the Parish Council Ever Done for Me. Taking a 20 year forward look there are big items of expenditure which will be hard or even impossible to avoid - such as repairs to the church wall (a legal requirement) and extensions to the burial ground (because we are near to being full).
There are many items on the wish list - such as helping local clubs and societies or introducing new facilities, for example extending the pavilion, As a Parish Council we want to to be in a position to deliver the resources for these initiatives.
We benefit from a regular income in the form of the precept (the proportion of the Council Tax Bill passed through to the Parish Council) but this is only enough to pay for our regular expenditure including staff salaries (for the clerk, financial officer and litter picker), grass cutting, upkeep and water/electricity for the pavilion and street lighting.
For anything else another source of funding is required. Money is required for essential maintenance and particularly for any new developments. Increasingly as the local authorities struggle with their own budgets we also end up providing funds to supplement their budgets - for example contributions to the WonderPass or for road safety improvements.
Planning our priorities and how we will fund these, and many other proposals, is why we need a Neighbourhood Plan.
What is a Neighbourhood Plan?
A Neighbourhood Plan is a formal document produced in collaboration with residents to provide the local voice to be heard which will then shape the decisions made by the higher councils (currently the District & County Councils) and National Government. It needs to be produced by the community, then adopted by the local authority to attain legal status. Putting a Neighbourhood Plan in place also directly increases the funds available to be spent locally by the Parish Council.
A neighbourhood plan can:
- allocate sites for development for housing, employment, and community uses
- protect what is special about an area by identifying green spaces or local heritage assets
- help to define the type and design of new development
- propose more development than the Local Plan A neighbourhood plan cannot:
- propose less growth than in the Local Plan
- prevent any development from ever taking place in an area
- be prepared without community input and support
- conflict with local, national or international policies
20 years ago we produced and published the Meldreth Parish Plan - a forerunner of the Neighbourhood Plan without any legal or financial powers. Please take a look it is online at Meldreth Parish Plan 2005
The Plan for the Neighbourhood Plan
January-July 2026: For the next 6 months we will establish a number of volunteer led groups collecting the background information and identifying possible future options across the topics and aspects of village life. This is why we need volunteers to lead and participate in these groups.
September 2026-July 2027: Once the data is available and credible options can be described we will put these out for consultation to the village as a whole by way of public meetings and questionnaires. The results from this consultation process will produce the draft Neighbourhood Plan.
Autumn 2027: Completion of the Neighbourhood Plan and submission for adoption to the local authority.
During this time period there will be major changes to local government with the Local Government Reorganisation for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and to the planning regulations with the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
How Can You Help?
Between now and the summer we need individuals to participate in and lead the groups to identifying options. Over the next 6 months this will require your time for a few meetings, some research and the development of a mini-report of a few pages ready for the next phase. Participation is open to, and welcome from, anyone with an interest in our village and its future.
As a council we always assess and balance funding for projects directed at education age residents, employment age residents and those post working age. We hope to collect ideas, contributions and volunteers from all of these age groups.
The plan is not concerned solely with housing development but with all aspects of development and its impact on village life. We already have a long list of areas where we need ideas - for example support for business, burial facilities, green policies, allotments, sports - and it will be the first job of the volunteers to finalise this list. We then expect the group to split into small working parties each focused on a specific topic or topics and tasked with building their mini-reports.
For each area we need to identify areas for development or essential maintenance. Taking Melwood as an example (and anticipating that we will develop this with the Melwood Conservation Group) we will explore:
- should we (help) extend the Local Nature Reserve?
- should we (help) fund more ecological measures, such as the gravel for fish spawning?
- will the Flambards bridge need maintaining or replacing?
If the only volunteers are the Parish Council the plan cannot go ahead, there will be no local voice or funds to get what we might want.
What Next?
- We will be holding an introductory meeting at 7pm on January 15th 2026 at the Elin Way community centre.
- There is a website at https://meldrethplan.org.uk which contains this and other relevant material
- Contact Roger James on 07808235873 or by email: roger@rogerjames.net