Everything you need to know before polling day, Thursday 24 September 2026.
All times and dates below are set by Wiltshire Council for this referendum. Deadlines shown as "5pm" are firm - applications must reach the council by then.
Every registered voter in the Neighbourhood Area can vote on one question: should Wiltshire Council use the Broad Hinton, Winterbourne Bassett & Uffcott Neighbourhood Development Plan 2025–2038 to help decide planning applications in our area?
The Plan has already passed independent examination. The Examiner and Wiltshire Council have confirmed it meets the legal "Basic Conditions". The referendum is the community's final sign-off - and we are asking you to vote Yes.
A Neighbourhood Plan is a community-led planning document. It sets out policies on how land in our area should and shouldn't be developed. Once "made" (formally adopted), it becomes part of the statutory development plan that Wiltshire Council must legally take into account when deciding planning applications.
The Plan covers the whole of the designated Neighbourhood Area: the parishes served by Broad Hinton & Winterbourne Bassett Parish Council, taking in the villages of Broad Hinton and Winterbourne Bassett and the hamlet of Uffcott, together with the surrounding countryside - all of which lies within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape. The Neighbourhood Area was formally designated by Wiltshire Council, and everyone registered to vote within it is entitled to vote in the referendum.
The official designation, including a map of the boundary, is available here.
Seventeen policies:
You'll get one ballot paper asking:
"Do you want Wiltshire Council to use the Neighbourhood Plan for Broad Hinton, Winterbourne Bassett and Uffcott to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area?"
Thursday 24 September 2026, 7:00am to 10:00pm.
Your polling station is Broad Hinton Village Hall, Yew Tree Lane, Broad Hinton, SN4 9RH (directions). Your poll card, delivered by Wiltshire Council before the vote, confirms exactly where to go.
Yes. To vote in person in England you must show an accepted form of photo ID (such as a passport or driving licence). If you don't have one, you can apply free for a Voter Authority Certificate at gov.uk. The deadline to apply for this referendum is 5pm on Wednesday 16 September 2026.
Yes. If you can't get to the polling station you can apply for a postal vote, or a proxy vote (someone you trust votes on your behalf). Both are arranged through Wiltshire Council. The deadlines are 5pm on Wednesday 9 September 2026 for a new postal vote and 5pm on Wednesday 16 September 2026 for a new proxy vote, so apply early. See gov.uk/voting-in-the-uk.
Anyone registered to vote in local elections and living within the neighbourhood plan area. If you're not sure you're registered, register at gov.uk/register-to-vote. The deadline to register for this referendum is Tuesday 8 September 2026.
Legal force, immediately. Under section 38(3A) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, a plan approved at referendum becomes part of the statutory development plan from the moment the result is declared. From that point, every planning application in the Neighbourhood Area must be decided with our policies as the legal starting point - by Wiltshire Council and by planning inspectors at appeal.
The homes our community actually needs. The Plan allocates two community-chosen sites, based on our own independent Housing Needs Assessment (2023): around 40 homes - weighted towards the smaller homes that let older residents downsize and young families stay - together with a new sports pavilion including an area for a community shop, a children's playground, and additional parking for the cricket club, village hall and school, at "Land North of Broad Hinton"; and a small affordable-led site at Bowmans Paddock, Winterbourne Bassett. Affordable homes come with local connection criteria for parish residents, close family and local employees.
Local say over local development. Design, character, housing mix, dark-skies lighting, Local Green Spaces and our valued views - including the setting of our villages beneath the Ridgeway and Hackpen Hill - judged against policies this community wrote, not just county-wide policies drafted for the whole of Wiltshire.
More money for our parishes. With a made Neighbourhood Plan, the community share of Community Infrastructure Levy receipts from development rises from 15% (capped) to 25% (uncapped) - spent locally, decided locally.
Stronger evidence at appeal. Inspectors must have regard to made Neighbourhood Plan policies. The Plan converts local knowledge into material an inspector can lawfully rely on.
Development does not stop - that is the crucial point. Applications continue whichever way the vote goes; a No vote simply means they are decided under national policy and the county-wide documents alone (principally the Wiltshire Core Strategy, adopted in 2015). Everything local lapses: the community-chosen allocations, the local connection criteria for affordable homes, the new sports pavilion with its community shop, the children's playground, and the extra parking for the cricket club, village hall and school, the Local Green Space designations, the protection of valued views and dark-skies policies - and the community share of CIL stays at the lower, capped rate. Years of community work would end without effect. A No vote does not stop development; it only removes our say in shaping it.
No - this is a common misunderstanding worth clearing up. The Neighbourhood Plan is a policy document, not an application for permission to build anything. It sets out the policies against which future planning applications in our area will be judged: design, housing type and size, protection of green spaces and views, dark skies, and the locations where development is supported.
Making the Plan does not, by itself, grant planning permission for anything - including on the two sites the Plan allocates. Any development would still require a planning application to Wiltshire Council in the usual way, with public consultation on which residents can comment. The referendum is a vote on whether our policies should guide those decisions.
By law, planning applications must be decided in accordance with "the development plan" unless material considerations indicate otherwise. In Wiltshire, the development plan currently consists of the Wiltshire Core Strategy (adopted January 2015, covering 2006–2026), the Wiltshire Housing Site Allocations Plan (2020), remaining saved policies from the pre-2009 district plans, the waste and transport plans, and every made neighbourhood plan. A Yes vote adds our neighbourhood plan to that list.
The Wiltshire Local Plan 2020–2038 was the document intended to replace the Core Strategy and the Site Allocations Plan. It was submitted for examination in November 2024; the examining inspectors raised significant soundness concerns in late 2025, culminating in a March 2026 letter, and Wiltshire Council withdrew it from examination on 19 May 2026. It never became part of the development plan and carries no weight in planning decisions.
The consequence: the Wiltshire Core Strategy remains the adopted strategic plan, but its policies are more than five years old, so Wiltshire's five-year housing land supply is measured against current housing need calculated by the Government's standard method - and Wiltshire cannot demonstrate that supply. That is the mechanism that triggers the tilted balance across the county, and it will persist until a new Wiltshire Local Plan is adopted, which is years away.
No. The Neighbourhood Plan is not folded into the Wiltshire Local Plan as a chapter of it, and it does not depend on a new Wiltshire Local Plan existing. It is a standalone document that becomes part of the Wiltshire development plan, sitting alongside whatever Wiltshire has adopted. It takes effect the moment a Yes result is declared - not when the county finally sorts out its Local Plan. If anything, the Wiltshire Local Plan's withdrawal makes our Neighbourhood Plan more valuable, not less: if made, it will be the most recently examined planning document applying anywhere in our area, at a time when the county's own policies are ageing and carry reduced weight.
Those stories are real, and we won't pretend otherwise: Melksham (300 homes allowed by the Government in July 2026 despite a neighbourhood plan made a year earlier), Horsham in West Sussex (800 homes allowed on appeal in 2025), Farnham in Surrey - and closer to home, Lyneham & Bradenstoke, a few miles north of us, where 56 homes were allowed at appeal in 2022 around a year after that parish's Neighbourhood Plan was made.
But look at why those plans lost, because the same conditions do not apply here. In each case: the council could not show a five-year supply of housing land, which triggers the NPPF's "tilted balance" - a presumption in favour of granting permission, under which settlement-boundary policies are treated as "out of date" and carry little weight; the neighbourhood plan's housing figure had been taken from a council plan that later failed (Melksham's came from the Wiltshire Local Plan, withdrawn in 2026); and the main defence was a boundary line on a map, in towns already identified for major growth.
Our position differs in three structural ways, set out below: the National Landscape, our own housing evidence, and a plan that says where development should go rather than only where it shouldn't.
The whole of our Neighbourhood Area lies within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape (formerly the AONB), forming part of the setting for views from the Ridgeway and Barbury Castle on the route to Avebury. National policy treats National Landscapes fundamentally differently from ordinary countryside:
In plain terms: in Melksham and Lyneham, Wiltshire's housing shortfall opened the door and the neighbourhood plans could not close it. Here, the National Landscape keeps that door largely closed in the first place. It is not absolute - smaller schemes causing limited landscape harm are judged case by case - which is exactly why the Neighbourhood Plan matters: it supplies the specific, examined local evidence (named views, dark skies, settlement character) that gives inspectors concrete grounds to apply the National Landscape's protection, and it governs the small-scale development the designation alone does not resolve.
Our housing evidence is our own. The Plan's housing policies rest on a Housing Needs Assessment of our parishes prepared in 2023 from Census and local data - not on a figure handed down from the withdrawn Wiltshire Local Plan. The defect that sank the Melksham plan simply does not exist in ours.
Our Plan plans positively. Rather than relying on a boundary line to resist everything, it allocates two community-chosen sites and defines precisely where small-scale infill is supported in Broad Hinton, Winterbourne Bassett and Uffcott. Plans that say where development should go fare far better at appeal than plans that only say no.
And it is new. National policy (NPPF paragraph 14) gives additional protection to housing decisions conflicting with a neighbourhood plan made within the last five years that contains policies and allocations to meet identified housing need. Recent appeals show this protection is not unbreakable - we make no pretence otherwise - but our Plan is far better placed under it than the plans in the news, and it is a layer on top of the National Landscape, not a substitute for it.
"Affordable housing" is a technical planning term, not just a loose description of cheaper houses. National policy defines it as housing, for sale or rent, for people whose needs are not met by the open market - provided at below market cost on terms that are legally protected so it stays affordable for future eligible households. It comes in several forms: homes for social or affordable rent (rented well below market rents through a registered provider), shared ownership (buy a share, rent the rest, increase your share over time), and discounted market sale (sold at a fixed discount to market value, with the discount preserved for the next buyer).
Why do we need it? Because the numbers in our own Housing Needs Assessment are stark. The median house price in the Neighbourhood Area was £462,750 in 2022 - and even an entry-level home here averaged £387,500, well above Wiltshire's median of £320,000. Buying that entry-level home requires a household income of roughly £100,000. Meanwhile a household of two people on lower-quartile Wiltshire earnings brings in around £27,500 between them - not enough to rent privately here, let alone buy. The Assessment found a substantial "can rent, can't buy" group, and concluded that a single lower earner cannot afford any housing tenure in the area without help.
In plain terms: without affordable housing, the people these villages depend on - young families starting out, people who grew up here, those who work locally - are priced out entirely. The Plan defines local connection criteria - residency in the parishes, close family here, or local employment - designed so the affordable homes go first to local people, with the criteria written into the legal agreements when the sites come forward. That is how a village keeps its next generation.
"Around 3 homes" is a calculation set out in the Plan itself (see pages 71-73). Winterbourne Bassett has 63 households, and the policy applies a 5% cap on additional homes to that figure (5% of 63 = 3.15, rounded to "around 3"). At least 2 of those have to be affordable homes, kept affordable in perpetuity, not sold on at market rate later.
It's written as "around" rather than a fixed number for the same reason the larger Broad Hinton site is written as "up to 40" rather than a flat 40. The site is only 0.38 hectares, and the exact final count depends on things that get settled at planning application stage, like hedgerow retention and the footpath link to Fox Row. A small element of market housing can be allowed alongside the affordable homes, but only where it's genuinely needed to help fund the affordable ones, not as general market development.
It's also worth saying this is a Rural Exception Site under Wiltshire's own housing policy (Wiltshire Core Strategy, Core Policy 44), meaning it can only go ahead at all because it meets a defined local need. It's not a general market housing allocation.
Yes - and not merely as a matter of goodwill. The mechanisms are legal ones:
We should be straight about the limits. Councils can approve departures from a plan, but must justify them against it - a made Neighbourhood Plan raises that bar considerably. Developers sometimes seek to renegotiate obligations on viability grounds, and can appeal refusals - but at appeal our policies apply just as they do at the council. And the community's role does not end at the referendum: the Parish Council is consulted on every application, and every resident can comment. The Neighbourhood Plan gives those comments something they currently lack - adopted local policies to point to.
We understand - protecting what makes these villages special is precisely why this Plan was written. But the choice on 24 September is not "housing or no housing". Development pressure exists whichever way the vote goes, and Wiltshire's inability to show a five-year housing land supply means speculative applications are being decided, county-wide, under a presumption that favours the developer. The real choice is between development planned by this community - modest, evidenced, on sites we chose, with homes prioritised for local people, delivering a new sports pavilion with space for a community shop, a children's playground, and more parking for the cricket club, village hall and school - or development proposed to us by others, decided under county-wide policies with no local layer.
It is also worth being clear about who the Plan's housing is for. Our Housing Needs Assessment found that what these villages lack is not executive houses but the right mix: smaller homes that let older residents downsize while staying in the village they know, freeing up family houses in the process, and more affordable homes - with local connection criteria - that give younger families a realistic way in. The Plan's policies require exactly that mix on the allocated sites. Without the Plan, there is nothing to stop an applicant proposing whatever sells best rather than what our villages need. Keeping our villages alive - the school roll, the pubs, the cricket club, neighbours who stay for decades - depends on people being able to arrive at the start of their lives and remain at the end of them. Voting No does not preserve our villages as they are; it removes the community's hand from the wheel.
You can read the complete Neighbourhood Plan, including the appendices and design guidelines, on the parish council referendum page. Printed copies are available to view at Broad Hinton Village Hall (Yew Tree Lane, SN4 9RH) and at Ridgecot, 175 Post Office Lane, Broad Hinton, SN4 9PB.
Get in touch and we'll be glad to help: info@neighbourhoodforum.org.uk