Last month we looked at the early parts of the plan making process and how you can ‘throw your hat in the ring’ through the Call for Sites process. In this, the second of our three-part series, Chartered Town Planner Richard Pigott will be looking at the formal parts of the plan making process, some of the issues faced by the local planning authorities trying to adopt plans in our region and what it all means for landowners.
Plan preparation is a lengthy process and councils must follow a clearly defined set of steps to ensure that their plan can ultimately be adopted. These steps are set out in The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 Act. They include the following key steps.
Evidence base
As discussed last month, gathering an evidence base includes a ‘Call for Sites’ exercise and the publication of a Strategic Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA). The council’s collation of a large swathe of technical assessments will already have started and is ongoing throughout the process.
Draft Local Plan consultation
This is the first stage, sometimes called ‘Issues and Options’, ‘Preferred Options’ or ‘Draft Local Plan’ and is required under Regulation 18 of the Act. These consultations ask for initial views on key topics or themes, inviting interested parties and statutory consultees to make representations, over a minimum six-week period. At this stage the council must set out what it considers to be the council’s needs over the next 15-20 years in respect of key issues such as housing numbers, employment land requirements, infrastructure, renewable energy, biodiversity net gain and any other issues.
Submission version consultation
This Proposed Submission consultation is an essential stage of Local Plan preparation. It represents the final opportunity to comment on the plan which the planning authority intends to submit to the Secretary of State for Examination. The Regulation 19 consultation requires comments to focus on the ‘legal compliance’ and ‘soundness’ of the Draft Local Plan as follows:
- To be legally compliant the Draft Local Plan must have been undertaken in accordance with all relevant legislation and procedural requirements; and
- To be considered sound, the Draft Local Plan must show that it is meets the tests of soundness set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (i.e. positively prepared, justified, effective and consistent with national policy).
The consultation is an opportunity for the public and interested parties to influence policy by suggesting changes. All comments will be submitted to the Inspector as part of the Examination process.
Formal submission of the plan
The Plan must be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate under Regulation 22. To accompany the submission of the plan, the LPA should provide a covering letter that sets out key information, including the initial view of the LPA about the potential main issues for the examination, the number of likely participants in the hearings and the number of hearing days that may be required.
Independent examination
Regulation 24 refers to the independent examination stage of the local plan process, where a planning inspector holds public hearings to assess the plan’s soundness. At this stage of the process landowners will typically instruct agents to attend on their behalf in order to extol the virtues of their site or criticise its omission from the plan (delete as applicable).
The difficulties of adopting a Local Plan
Locally, a number of councils are midway through the process of adopting a new Local Plan or reviewing an existing one, including:
- Amber Valley Borough Council’s latest attempt at a new Local Plan to replace the current 2006-2011 version was submitted in summer 2024 but at the examination stage it emerged that a proposed allocation of 2,000 homes at Brun Lane on the western edge of Derby which has been identified as a sustainable location, is undeliverable because the landowner is unwilling to release all of the land for development and so the Inspectors instructed that the site be removed as an allocation. This highlights the fact that (with the exception of critical infrastructure) there must be a willing landowner in order for land to be allocated for development. If you are promoting a site for development it is critical that its availability is made clear at every possible stage, including at the examination in public.
- Erewash Borough Council is trying to complete a review of its Local Plan Strategy and examination hearings took place in summer 2024. However, the Inspector highlighted significant concerns about its plan including: a lack of clarity over how some sites were selected and others not; and the lack of a 5 year housing land supply upon adoption, which would make the plan immediately out of date upon adoption. If this current version of the plan has to be abandoned there will be new opportunities to for landowners to promote their sites.
- South Derbyshire District Council is part way through its review of the Local Plan Part 1 (the strategic element) and is concentrating on the allocation of strategic sites at this stage. The Council proposes to accommodate 5,609 dwellings towards Derby City’s unmet need, bringing the total for the District to 14,483. The Local Plan Part 2 review (relating to non-strategic allocations and more detailed Development Management policies) will be starting soon and this stage will be of greater interest to many landowners as it will present an opportunity to promote smaller sites of 100 dwellings or less and will also include a review of the settlement boundaries in all towns and villages.
My site is in an emerging Local Plan – what next?
A planning authority should give weight to an emerging plan according to stage of preparation, level of unresolved objections, degree of consistency with National Planning Policy Framework. If your site is in the emerging plan as a ‘draft allocation’ and you want to rely on this in an application, you might have to wait until the examination has taken place to see whether objections are resolved in the hearings before the council will attach significant weight to it.
What if my site is not in an emerging Local Plan?
Despair not as a lot can happen as the process unfolds, as the examples above highlight. If your site is ‘sustainable’ with no significant technical constraints, it will still have a good chance of success if there is a clear need for the type of development proposed, for example where the council cannot demonstrate a 5 year housing land supply. However, it is important to time the application right – if it is submitted too late the council will have adopted their plan and the need for your development will have fallen away.
Next month, we will look more closely at the issue of timing speculative applications as well as the most important lessons for promoting a site through the Local Plan.
Richard Pigott, Director, Chartered Town Planner, Planning & Design Practice Ltd
