MADAM – I am sure that our MP does not intend to mislead his constituents.

However, his letter (SNJ April 10) on the importance of neighbourhood plans contains two important inaccuracies.

The first is that neighbourhood plans are ‘vital’. In the Stroud district, they are not. This is because they are subsidiary to a local plan.

If there is no local plan (as in Stroud district) they carry little weight.

It is surprising that Neil Carmichael does not know this.

It is clear in the briefings on neighbourhood plans.

Moreover, one of Mr Carmichael’s seminar leaders for his neighbourhood plan workshops is an expert in the field.

He is Paul Fong (MD of Hunter Page Planning Ltd) who has helped developers gain planning permissions on green field sites in the Cotswolds.

Doubtless Mr Fong would have been able to advise Mr Carmichael on the real value of neighbourhood plans in the face of a well-resourced planning application?

The second is the inference that the current SDC Labour-led administration is responsible for the lack of a local plan.

They share some of the responsibility, but before 2011, the Conservatives led the SDC.

On Sunday, April 13, Nick Boles’ MP claimed there was no excuse for councils not having a local plan, as they had more than ten years to prepare one.

If this is so, the responsibility for the lack of a local plan needs to be shared between Labour and Conservatives.

The real issue that needs to be addressed is the planning loophole that the government has created by changing the NPPF to presume ‘all planning is sustainable’ while leaving no refuge for panning authorities that have no local plan. It is troubling that the Localism Act passed at the same time the NPPF changed. This has created an empty promise.

To illustrate this: The foreword to the Localism Act states that decisions driven centrally created “situations where people felt ‘done to’ and imposed upon”.

The Localism Act would change all that so that in planning “decisions about housing are taken locally”.

This is not happening in Stroud district. I am sure that people want a democratic, fair and local planning system. To this end, I urge Mr Carmichael to work harder to amend the NPPF to deliver democratic planning.

Specifically, the NPPF must give precedence to emerging local plans, recognise neighbourhood plans and reinforce the primacy of protected sites – such as AONB and landscape character sites and the green belt.

Jolyon Neely

Horsley