It is time for NATC’s Neighbourhood Plan Committee to follow its terms of reference and “undertake the process in a democratic, transparent, and fair fashion.”

Throughout the neighbourhood plan process, NATC has:

• Withheld information from the community it represents until the last possible moment – including unlawfully withholding FOI requests
• Allowed the developers to present misleading information whilst excluding us from representation
• Ignored the written advice of the government’s planning adviser on multiple issues – yet continues to accept their grants of public money
• Refused to act when inaccurate ‘information’ has been identified
• Barred an NATC council member from even raising these issues at council

Breaches of Freedom of Information FOI/EIR Law by New Alresford Town Council

We were concerned about the accuracy of the information behind the neighbourhood plan, so we asked NATC for copies of the background reports to its Winter 2024 Community Consultation.

The Law requires the council to respond to requests for public information within 20 working days – but NATC withheld the reports for 320 days, only releasing them after the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO is the independent regulator for upholding information rights law. It ruled that NATC failed in its obligations.

Why would your council possibly want to keep these reports from you and the rest of the community it represents?

Why would it willfully ignore freedom of information law?

NATC Refuses to Fact Check the Plan

NATC has chosen to stall the neighbourhood plan by 12 months, we do not understand why.

However, some of this time could be used constructively to address concerns about the accuracy of the information used for the plan’s evidence base. We have contacted NATC a number of times to offer our comments. Yet the council and its Neighbourhood Plan Committee have refused to even discuss them, preferring to wait until after the next stage of the process, the Regulation 14 Consultation.

Reg. 14 Consultation is the last opportunity for the community to comment on its neighbourhood plan before the final version goes to independent examination by a Planning Inspector. A huge sum of public money is being spent on preparing the plan and it seems clear that the council should address any inaccuracies before the new draft neighbourhood plan is completed. This would save time and money correcting mistakes after the consultation.

More importantly, how can the community be expected to give informed views on the plan if the information provided at the consultation is inaccurate?

Misleading Information at Public Consultation

Ahead of the last Community Consultation, we repeatedly asked NATC to comply with the written advice of the government’s independent neighbourhood planning advisor, Locality – see link. Locality’s advice stated:

• “the consultation material should be evidence-led“ – in other words it should be true
• “it is essential that consultation and engagement activity aimed at informing the preparation of a neighbourhood plan provides the wider public with balanced and objective information to assist them in understanding the problem, alternatives and/or solutions.”
• the consultation is “unlikely to be an appropriate way for landowners … to put in representations and convey their interpretation of the options considered using their own material.”

NATC has received £18,000 of grants for the neighbourhood plan through Locality, yet it ignored all of Locality’s advice, allowing The Grange Estate to attend the event and give out its own misleading material. This included the following claims:

The result of NATC ignoring Locality’s advice was that The Grange Estate was allowed to present false claims to the community that its “proposal looks to provide new affordable homes for first-time buyers, key-workers and an ageing population” in the colourful flyer they gave to the public.

We are hugely disappointed that false promises should be made to these groups in particular.

Those claims were completely contradicted in the less readable ‘Information’ Pack, which also stated that:

Hiding behind the word ‘understood’ does not alter the fact that this is simply untrue; there is no sewer beyond the pumping station at De Lucy Avenue – hundreds of metres from the meadow. A visual inspection of the roads or a 5 minute check with Southern Water would have confirmed this.

We reported these misleading statements to NATC’s Neighbourhood Plan Committee in December 2024, yet incredibly, not only has the committee done nothing to address the inaccuracies, the documents from the Grange Estate still appear on the town council’s website – see link – without any corrections at the time of writing in February 2026.

The Royal Town Planning Institute is the professional body that oversees planning in England. The RTPI’s Conduct and Discipline Panel – see June 2025 decisions on link – took a more robust view than NATC. It found the following:

Friends of Barn Meadow Barred From Community Consultation

Before the Community Consultation, we presented Locality’s advice to NATC showing that it was wrong to allow the landowner to represent itself at the event. Ignoring the advice without even a reply to us, NATC invited the landowner, allowing it to speak to the public completely unchecked. The result was that the public was misled at the consultation.

To make matters worse, NATC barred the Friends of Barn Meadow from representation at the event to give some balance and objectivity – again, ignoring the advice from Locality who had written that:

• “this does not appear to follow best practice around the need for qualifying bodies to be ‘inclusive and open in the preparation of’ their neighbourhood plan (see paragraph 047 of relevant government guidance)” – link to government guidance

We were even told by members of the community that organisers of the consultation had said that our group – who were forced to stand outside – had been giving misleading information. We challenge the committee to be specific and promise to address any information that we cannot substantiate.

How can the community be expected to give informed views on the plan if the information provided at the consultation is inaccurate?