EAST Devon District Council is organising a neighbourhood planning referendum in Lympstone to invite residents to approve a draft planning blueprint for the village.

Lympstone is one of only a handful of parishes, across England, to have got this far in creating their own Neighbourhood Plan, under new national planning guidelines.

The neighbourhood plan will give the village and planning officers from the district a benchmark with which to consider any future planning applications for the area.

National interest in the proposal was underlined this week when Brandon Lewis MP, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, paid a visit to Lympstone on Thursday 22 January.

Hard work The Minister spent 30 minutes in the village, looking at the draft neighbourhood plan and meeting residents as part of a mini-tour of East Devon that also took in the ground-breaking new community of Cranbrook.

Following many months of hard work in the parish, working with members of East Devon’s planning policy team, the next step is to hold a referendum to see whether residents like the proposals.

The vote will be held on Thursday 26 March, with polling opening at 7.00 a.m. and closing at 10.00 p.m. The usual polling station at Lympstone Village Hall is not available, so the ballot boxes will be at Lympstone Methodist Church instead.

The first official notice of the referendum will be Publication of an Information Statement and Specified Documents on Monday 16 February. This will be available on the East Devon District Council website and also at the Council Offices, Knowle, Sidmouth.