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Housing minister sets 30-month target for local plan-making
The housing minister has set a two-and-a-half-year target for local plan-making and allocated funding to councils to review their green belt.
Housing minister sets 30-month target for local plan-making #UKhousingThe housing minister has set a two-and-a-half-year target for local plan-making and allocated funding to councils to review their green belt #UKhousingMatthew Pennycook confirmed his “clear expectation” for local planning authorities to speed up plan-making in a written statement to the House of Commons on 27 February.
Local plans are frameworks to determine where houses and infrastructure should be built. Currently, fewer than a third of local areas have an up-to-date local plan in place.
Under the new guidance, local authorities are now expected to produce a local plan within 30 months, as opposed to the current average time of seven years.
Mr Pennycook said the target would help “progress toward universal coverage of local plans”.
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The housing minister also announced that 133 local authorities will each receive £70,000 of “pump priming funding” to contribute to the cost of carrying out green belt reviews. This will be paid to councils “shortly”, he added.
The government also published new guidance for local planning authorities on green belt land. The guidance gives “substantial weight to the value of using suitable brownfield land within settlements for homes and other identified needs”, Mr Pennycook said.
It also takes into consideration other policies including those relating to the protection of heritage assets when making decisions.
In addition, the government allocated £4.5m for the Local Government Association’s Pathways to Planning graduate programme, through which it hopes to train 300 new planners by the end of 2026. Nearly 90 graduate planners have already started work through this scheme.
Other changes confirmed by the housing minister include introducing regular assessments to help councils stay on track towards meeting their targets and using digital tools to increase transparency on available land for new development.
Councils will have to complete a self-assessment form at the start of the 30-month process. They will then be assessed by the Planning Inspectorate between the two mandatory consultation windows and after the second consultation, when the authority intends to submit the plan for independent examination.
According to the government, these ‘gateway assessments’ will be “a flexible and supportive process”, with advice targeted at those areas of plan preparation which pose the greatest risks to the soundness and legal compliance of the plan.
Mr Pennycook said: “The steps we are taking today will ensure that local plans are simpler, faster to prepare and more accessible so that communities in every part of the country can more easily shape decisions about how to deliver the housing and wider development their areas need.”
The changes build on Labour’s revised National Planning Policy Framework published in December, which restored mandatory housebuilding targets for councils and introduced requirements to allocate green belt land if they are unable to meet these targets.
Further funding for councils at the later stages of plan-making will be announced in due course to help them prepare or update their local plans.
A new dedicate webpage for plan-making resources has also been created to provide clearer guidance to speed up plan-making.
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