A neighbourhood plan
This is a plan created by a local community in a designated area which after various stages and acceptance by the local community through a referendum becomes part of the local plan produced by the planning authority.
For West St Leonards this is Hastings Borough Council at least for the moment.
Click here for much more information on the process
Our neighbourhood plan
West St Leonards Neighbourhood Forum was finally designated by Hastings Borough Council as a Neighbourhood Forum on February 6 2024 – the first in Hastings. This means we can create an official Neighbourhood Plan, to influence future development across the area in decades to come. Progress on the project stalled as we waited for government support packages to help with this technically challenging task.
In November 2024, the funding and expert help finally arrived for the financial year 2024 to 2025. It enabled us to employ a consultant, Jim Boot. With his help and advice we assisted with an exhibition about the Old Bathing Pool Site in January and held a public exhibition and workshop – the visioning event on February 22. From this an initial draft outline neighbourhood plan was produced. (click to see it)
We were also able to obtain technical support from AECOM (https://aecom.com/ an international company who describe themselves as “ the global infrastructure leader— advisors, planners, designers, engineers, program and construction managers driven by a common purpose to deliver a better world”.
Through them we obtained a design code for the Neighbourhood Area, which you will find by clicking here and a housing needs assessment pulling together information about the area from a wide range of sources, which you can find here.
We were ready during the current financial year to take this work through to our full first draft of our neighbourhood plan. However the Government decided to cancel all government grants for neighbourhood plans and so we have not received the balance of the grant to which we were entitled, leaving us with no resources to continue our work.
The background history
During the summer of 2024 we brought together some ideas for our neighbourhood plan, collected from the surveys of the area and meetings about the area which have taken place since the beginning of 2020: work which was much delayed because of covid.
More detail on the history is here.
The Local Plan for Hastings Borough Council
We have been working with the Planning Department of Hastings BC with regular meetings over the last two years and in particular they have discussed with us their work on producing a revised Local Plan, amending the Local Plan which was put out for consultation in 2021.
Their new plan was published on February 19 2026 and details can be found here https://www.hastings.gov.uk/planning/policy/
The plan is now open for public consultation.
You can download the plan and other forms with the following links
- Draft Hastings local plan preferred options (33MB) (.pdf)
- Comment response form (.doc)
- Policies Map (.pdf version
The Forum’s proposals
Following our discussions with Hastings BC and in our meetings we have decided that we should put forward our proposals on the following 9 areas, each heading has a separate page or a link to a single doument, and clicking the title will take you to the page – with details of our current ideas and links to relevant documents:
1. Green Spaces -
2. Design Guidance and Codes (prepared by Aecom)
The design guidance and codes, which was prepared by Aecom in consultation with the forum and following the event on February 22, is here.
Once the Neighbourhood Plan is approved, this document will guide the forum and the Local Authority planning department in making decisions on planning applications.
“Both design guidance and codes are contained within this document, highlighted within dark boxes as shown here. The difference between guidance and codes is summarised below:
“Design codes: Design codes are mandatory requirements for design issues and are expressed with the word MUST.
“Guidance: Guidance set out aspirations for design that is expected to be delivered and are expressed with one of two words:
“SHOULD reflects design principles that are strongly encouraged.
“COULD reflects design principles that are suggestions."
(extract from the introduction to the codes, page 5)
3. Housing needs – possible additional sites to those in the local plan and the Aecom Housing Needs Assessment
4. Community Energy
5. Active Travel - Connectivity – roads, cycle routes, foot paths – pavements as well as public transport – buses and train services
6. Heritage
7. Youth provision
9. Economy/jobs with the area as a destination for leisure.
Timetable for preparing a response:
From now until March 28 we will be working on our responses based on the information we already hold from our various surveys and meetings carried out from January 2020 up to and including the meeting on February 22 2025. Plus any other suggestions which we receive.
March 28 - Exhibition and workshop
April 7: following the March 28 event, finalise our responses to the Local Plan to take into account what we have heard from the local community.
During the Summer
We are hoping that we can carry this work forward during the summer as follows
April to May - we would use the submissions with our draft Neighbourhood Plan to prepare our draft NP for consultation – if money is available with professional help
Brighton University have once again offered to help us and during May their students will be researching and reporting on 4 of our areas:
• Housing needs – possible additional sites to those in the local plan.
• Community Energy
• Active Travel - Connectivity – roads, cycle routes, foot paths – pavements as well as public transport – buses and train services.
• Economy/jobs with the area as a destination for leisure.
June – July
carry out our public consultations on our draft plan (Regulation 14)
August
following the consultation finalise the NP
September
submit the NP to the Council -for them to take it forward with the Regulation 16 consultation, which leads on to the NP and all comments going to the examiner and in due course the referendum of local residents on the plan,which if passed makes the NP part of the local authority’s planning policy for the neighbourhood area.
Funding
At the moment we are applying for funding for our work on the response to the local plan and our open day on March 28.
We are also exploring ideas for further funding for the work required during the summer and thereafter.
Incomplete / old information
One part was a list of green spaces which could be proposed for designation, i.e. protection from development. A proposed list of green spaces as well as footpath connections together with a map of the area showing the main green sites. (click each for more information)
For any green space which we want to be designated we have to provide an assessment, which follows a standard form. This has been started but there is a lot more work to be done. If anyone would like to help with this please let us know. For more information click here.
We are also getting technical support on the following:
- Housing need assessment – desktop exercise to examine the housing situation in the area and the need for housing: click here for more information
- Design code – scope of work and map of subareas enclosed: click here for more informationclick here for more information
- Site options – identifying and making proposals for specific sites: click here for more information
- Master planning – overall plans for the area and / or specific sites
The above plans and others are included in this document, areaplans_2025_02.pdf, click to down load.
The individual plans, apart from those above are
Possible sites for development
More information about these will be available at the meeting and exhibition on February 22.