Local Plan Making for Dummies
Local Plan making can be very complicated if you approach it the wrong way, so I thought I would write an easy guide to making a Plan.
Let’s start with the words of the new Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook and his instructions:
“The Government knows how essential it is that local authorities have an up-to-date Local Plan in place as a basis for making sustainable decisions about the future of our cities, towns and countryside. We are committed to the Plan making system; it is the right way to plan for the growth and environmental enhancement our country needs - by bringing local authorities and their communities together to agree the future of their areas…
The length of examinations has been increasing, from 65 weeks on average in 2016 to 134 weeks in 2022. The previous Government set out an expectation that Inspectors should operate "pragmatically" during Local Plan examinations to allow deficient Plans to be 'fixed' at examination. This has gone too far and has perversely led to years of delays to Local Plan examinations without a guarantee that the Plans will ever be found sound, or that the local authorities will take the decisions necessary to get them over the line. This has to end.
Section 20 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 provides that a local planning authority must not submit a Local Plan unless they have complied with relevant legislative requirements, and they think the plan is ready for independent examination by a Planning Inspector. Accordingly, an authority should not be submitting for examination a deficient plan (i.e. with not enough housing numbers) believing the Inspector will use significant time and resource during the examination to 'fix' it... This new approach will apply to all Plans with immediate effect… Where a Plan is unable to be found sound, the local authority will need to work in partnership with their local community to bring forward a new Plan.”
What to do next?
If you haven’t got a Local Plan, look up your housing target, do a call for land, run a Reg 18 consultation, run a Reg 19 consultation, submit it for inspection and adopt your Local Plan. ASAP.
If you are at Reg 18 and your housing target number is not what is required, you need to start again AND GET THE NUMBERS.
Emerging local plans that have reached Reg 19 – you will have to go back to the drawing board if the gap between the level of housing proposed by the council and its requirement under the housing target number is more than 200.
If you are at Reg 19 you can push with your Local Plans if the housing target numbers is no more than 200 per year, you must submit the Local Plan within one month of the new NPPF coming into force in order to benefit from lower housing figures than in the standard method.
So, there you have it. Make a Local Plan!
Until next week,
Henry