Choose the wording
Copy or adapt a resolution and send it to the clerk in time for the council’s agenda procedure.
View the council resolutions →Take action · Councils and residents
Turn one Rural ROAR
into hundreds.
Effingham Parish Council has made the first move. Now every rural council can put its position on the democratic record—and every resident can ask their MP to act.
For parish and town councils
Put it on the agenda.
Send us the result.
Use EPC’s adopted resolution, the detailed Rural ROAR motion or wording of your own. The formal resolution should state exactly what your council supports.
Debate and adopt
Record the vote, the reforms supported, the decision to join and the council’s nominated representative.
Report it to Rural ROAR
Email the signed resolution, approved minutes or an official council link so we can verify and record it.
Email your adopted resolution →The feedback loop
Your resolution becomes part of the national mandate.
- We acknowledge it.Rural ROAR confirms receipt with the named council contact.
- We verify it.We check the signed resolution, approved minutes or official council record.
- We count it.The council joins the public Rural Alliance for Planning Change record and its representative receives campaign updates.
Or write to jointheroar@ruralroar.org.uk
For residents
Ask your MP to stand up for villages.
MPs generally act for people who live in their constituency. Find yours using the official UK Parliament service, then personalise and send the letter below. Include your full address or postcode so the MP can confirm that you are a constituent.
Find my MP on UK Parliament ↗551 / 575Guildford assessment areas—96%—met the A/B/D threshold that now forms the current grey-belt definition.
The consequence is not theoretical: the first national study found that 16 of 20 major residential grey-belt appeals were allowed. Yet A, B and D do not assess villages, while Purpose C remains excluded.
Template letter to your MP
Subject: Grey-belt policy must not treat villages as blank spaces
Dear [MP NAME],
I am writing as a resident of [VILLAGE/TOWN] to ask you to support urgent reform of the grey-belt rules as they affect rural villages.
Guildford Borough Council’s 2026 Green Belt Assessment, prepared by AECOM, examined 575 assessment areas. Table 3-4 found that 551 of them—96%—did not strongly contribute to Green Belt purposes A, B or D. The 17 August 2026 NPPF now defines grey belt through those three purposes alone, although Guildford is updating its assessment to reflect the new Framework.
The update also removed the Footnote 7 exclusion for heritage, habitat, landscape and flood-risk constraints from the grey-belt definition, widening the land capable of being labelled grey belt. Purpose C—safeguarding the countryside from encroachment—remains excluded, and the A/B/D tests do not assess villages.
The consequence is already visible. Research published in October 2025 found that 16 of the first 20 major residential grey-belt appeals—schemes of ten homes or more—were allowed.
CPRE subsequently found that 88% of the homes allowed in its sample of 13 grey-belt appeal schemes would be built on previously undeveloped countryside. Only 12% were on previously developed land.
Villages are not spaces between towns. The green fields around them provide their setting, separation and identity, and many communities have already planned positively for housing through referendum-backed Neighbourhood Plans.
Please will you:
- ask the Secretary of State to suspend the grey-belt test as applied to villages, including reliance on contested findings affecting open countryside around villages with a made Neighbourhood Plan and a defined settlement boundary, pending policy review and reassessment;
- support reform of the grey-belt method so villages are included in the tests for sprawl, merging and historic setting, and Purpose C is a decisive test for countryside encroachment; and
- support meaningful planning devolution, including a statutory power for qualifying parish councils to call in and decide applications that materially conflict with their made Neighbourhood Plans.
I would be grateful if you would tell me whether you support these reforms and whether you will raise them with the minister responsible for planning.
Yours sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR FULL ADDRESS OR POSTCODE]
Keep carrying the message