Chippenham Neighbourhood Plan Annual Report 2025/26 Published

The Neighbourhood Plan Monitoring Sub-Committee has published its Annual Report for 2025/2026 which reveals how the Neighbourhood Plan has been used in its second year of existence.

The Annual Report covers the period 1 June 2024 – 31 May 2026 and its purpose is to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the Neighbourhood Plan during this period. Monitoring data was collected (published in two monitoring reports) in order to inform the Annual Report findings.

The headline findings from the Annual Report are as follows:

• The Plan’s policies were used on 97 occasions by the Local Planning Authority (LPA) in assessing planning applications in Chippenham
• The most frequently used Plan policy was TC4 (Development in Chippenham Conservation Area)
• The Sub-Committee considers that the LPA applied the right Plan policies in the assessment of planning applications in the majority of instances (78% of the time)
• The Sub-Committee considers that the LPA determined planning applications in accordance with a relevant Plan policy 79% of the time. This is an increase of 13% on the previous period
• The LPA cited Plan policies in the refusal of 2 planning applications
• The Planning Inspectorate cited Plan policies in the dismissal of 2 appeals
• Three projects were delivered to help meet stated Plan infrastructure requirements. These were tree planting, installation of bus real time passenger information and installation of 25 wayfinding signs on the town’s footpath network. Other projects are ongoing.

You can read the full Annual Report, including an Executive Summary, here: Chippenham Neighbourhood Plan Annual Report 2025/26