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Queen's Park and Charminster Community Charity home
Row of red-roofed houses with bay windows along a Charminster street

Planning & Buildings

A group of hands stacked together in a show of teamwork

A Neighbourhood Plan enables us to direct our council on the development we will, or will not, accept within our community

Cleared roadside green space with tree stumps, cut shrubs and a low brick wall in front of a block of flats

A Neighbourhood plan is key for our area

Take control of housing & development planning

We don't have enough housing in the UK, with annual new housing having been lower than government targets for decades. Central government sets targets for every council in the UK, with fines if they don't meet them.

BCP Council submitted their plan on how to meet their targets, called the 'Local Plan', on 27 June 2024. At the same time, local council planning powers were reduced. The aim was to increase the number of new homes built but has instead led to an increase in residential properties, as well as and shops and offices, being turned into HMOs (House of Multiple Occupation, also called Shared Housing) and even sub-standard accommodation below the national living space threshold per person.

Central Government empowers local communities to influence what housing and development in their community should look like via a community agreed 'Neighbourhood Plan'.

This Plan enables the community to direct the council as to what type of development is acceptable - or not - for housing, as well as commercial property and local high street development.

  1. The Issue

    Central Government sets new housing targets & allocations across the UK. BCP's Local Plan shows how the local council plan to meet this, with allocation distributed across each ward.

  2. Queen's Park Allocation

    As of October 2024, our ward target is 180 new housing units in the next 5 years, 60 of which are already identified. A studio flat or HMO room is a unit, in the same way a 3-bed family home is a unit.

  3. Problem

    Without a Neighbourhood Plan, increasing housing density by knocking down houses or conversion to smaller studios and HMOs is likely and, in some cases, out of council control. The Plan reasserts this control, and - even better - by the community.

  4. Benefit

    A Neighbourhood Plan enables us to influence what development is acceptable or not: from the type of housing to the style of building and materials. It also enables a 10% increase in CIL funding for our ward (Community Infrastructure Levy charge).

  5. Delivery

    The creation of the Neighbourhood Plan is a core project for our Charity and is already well underway. We were granted government funding to create it, and need your help to draft and agree the Plan by the end of 2025.