Newton and Biggin Neighbourhood Plan: Comment by 2 October

Rugby Borough Council is taking comments on the Newton and Biggin Neighbourhood Plan until 5pm on Friday 2 October 2026. The six-week consultation opened on 21 August.

This is the stage that counts. The parish council submitted the plan to the borough on 14 July under Regulation 16 of the neighbourhood planning regulations. Every representation made now goes to the independent examiner who decides whether the plan can proceed to a referendum.

Once made, the plan is not advice. Rugby Borough Council has to have regard to it when it determines planning applications in the parish.

Why this is not just a village document

Newton and Biggin is one of the fastest-changing parishes in the borough, and the numbers in the plan show it.

• The 2011 census recorded 572 residents
• The 2021 census recorded 1,587, nearly three times as many
• The growth came from Coton Park, the urban extension on the parish’s western side
• The borough’s emerging Local Plan allocates 800 more dwellings and 7.5 hectares of employment land at Coton Park East, inside this parish
• It allocates a further 25 or so dwellings for Newton and Biggin itself

The plan covers 2025 to 2041 and runs to 51 pages with 22 policies. Anyone with an interest in Coton Park East is looking at the document that will sit alongside the Local Plan when those applications are decided.

What the plan protects

The environmental policies are the sharpest part of the document. They designate:

• three Local Green Spaces at the Newton section of the Great Central Walk, the nature reserve and Coton Park Pool, and Newton allotments, where development will not be supported other than in very special circumstances
• eight important views, including two from Five Arches Car Park along the Great Central Walk, and several looking over open country towards Rugby and the Avon
• areas of ridge and furrow earthworks as non-designated heritage assets
• the existing footpath and bridleway network, which large schemes must connect to rather than sever

Four buildings in the parish are listed at Grade II, and the plan says new development will have to take their settings into account.

What it says about new houses

Policy G1 draws settlement boundaries around Newton village and around Coton Park. Land outside them is treated as open countryside.

Policy H1 is the one most likely to be argued over. It says new development in Newton village should favour bungalows suitable for older people and homes of up to three bedrooms, and it sets a presumption against homes with more than four bedrooms.

The parish’s own consultation is what drove that. The plan reports that:

• more than 70% of respondents thought it important that older people could move into more suitable accommodation
• more than 67% thought it important that affordable housing let young people stay in the parish
• 59.74% said there were too few bungalows
• 64.79% said there was too little retirement or sheltered housing

On affordable housing, Policy H3 supports small rural exception sites next to the settlement boundary, at a tenure mix of 66% affordable rent and 33% affordable home ownership, tied in perpetuity to people with a local connection.

Three gaps the plan puts on the record

Read past the policies and the plan is unusually frank about what Coton Park did not get.

• There is no meeting place in Coton Park. The plan calls this “a major deficit”, and notes the Newton Memorial Hall “is not well located to serve residents in Coton Park”. Policy CF1 explicitly supports a new meeting facility there.
• The secondary school is not happening. The plan records that provision was made at planning stage for new primary and secondary schools at Coton, and that Warwickshire County Council, as education authority, “has subsequently determined that a secondary school is not required as existing schools have surplus capacity”.
• The bus is on a contract with an end date. The plan says the limited service in Newton village is contracted until 2029 and “does not meet the needs of all”, while noting that the on-demand Indiego service “would benefit from better promotion”. Only 15.6% of households in the parish have no car.

On traffic, 87% of respondents said additional speed restrictions were important or very important, naming Main Street, Newton Lane, Coton Park and St Thomas Cross. The plan describes the St Thomas Cross junction as “of a non-standard configuration and inadequate to accommodate the safe movement of increased vehicle flows”.

What it means for you

If you live in the parish, including Coton Park, you do not need to be an objector to take part. Support counts too, and the examiner reads everything. You can write in by:

• email to localplan@rugby.gov.uk, putting “Newton and Biggin Neighbourhood Plan” in the subject line
• post to Newton and Biggin Neighbourhood Plan, Development Strategy, Rugby Borough Council, Town Hall, Evreux Way, Rugby, CV21 2RR

Representations must arrive by 5pm on Friday 2 October 2026. You can also ask on your representation to be told the council’s decision on adoption.

The full documents are on the council’s Newton and Biggin Neighbourhood Plan page, including the submission version of the plan itself. Paper copies can be read at Rugby Town Hall on Evreux Way and at Rugby Library and Information Centre on Little Elborow Street during normal opening hours.

If you live elsewhere in the borough, this is worth watching for one reason. Rugby Borough Council has already adopted the Clifton upon Dunsmore Neighbourhood Plan, after a consultation that closed on 4 November 2025, and an adopted plan gives a parish weight in planning decisions that a parish without one does not have. Newton and Biggin would be the next. Rugby Borough Council is itself due to be replaced by a new unitary authority on 1 April 2028, and a plan made before then carries into whatever follows.

Related: our running coverage of Rugby planning applications and decisions.