Residents will be able to vote in May on an important planning document that will shape the future development of a village.

Shenley parish councillors unanimously voted in favour of taking the Shenley Neighbourhood Plan to referendum on May during an extraordinary council meeting which took place on Tuesday.

The plan, which has been years in the making, could be vital in ensuring Shenley maintains its rural and village feel at a time when Hertsmere Borough Council is faced with growing housing targets.

The process to taking the neighbourhood plan in Shenley to referendum has not been plain sailing – and one or two issues still need to be sorted out.

It comes after the parish council received legal advice to scrap taking the plan to referendum in May after concerns were raised about one of the plan’s five core policies.

The policy of concern, labelled SH3, sets out what type of housing would be supported in any future development in Shenley.

The legal counsel said the policy needed to be amended to "make clear" that any type of future housing development in Shenley is subject to an overriding policy that one to three-bedroom homes are what would be primarily supported in the village.

The legal counsel fears the way the policy is currently written "undermines" the stated intention to focus on delivering smaller homes in Shenley, which is what the majority of residents said they’d prefer to see during the neighbourhood plan consultation.

At the end of February, the counsel said the suggested amendments needed to be "independently examined", and told the parish council May’s referendum should be postponed.

On March 5, the parish council wrote to Hertsmere Borough Council to share the advice it had received from the counsel.

Before Hertsmere responded five days later to say there was no time to make any more changes - and recommended to go to referendum in May -, discussions were ongoing at the parish council about whether to go to referendum or not.

Four hours before the borough council responded on March 10, an extraordinary meeting was called by the parish council, the Times understands, intended to reaffirm support for going to referendum as scheduled - but also provided an opportunity to officially postpone the referendum.

With the extraordinary meeting already called, the parish council returned to its legal counsel on March 11 with the advice it had received from Hertsmere. The counsel eventually concluded on March 15 that the parish council take the neighbourhood plan to referendum in May.

The extraordinary meeting on Tuesday, which was blighted by antisemitism from a member of the public, still went ahead as planned, with every parish councillor agreeing on the scheduled date of May 6, when other local elections are also taking place.

A change to the wording of the SH3 policy is likely to go ahead, as recommended by the legal counsel, but not until after the public in Shenley have had a chance to vote on whether they support the neighbourhood plan in its current form.