Local Plan Route Mapper and Toolkit 2025

Planning law requires that decisions need to be taken in accordance with the ‘development plan’ unless material considerations indicate otherwise (see section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004). The ‘development plan’ for an area can comprise a number of different adopted planning policy documents including Spatial Development Strategies (such as the Mayor of London’s Spatial Strategy), Minerals and Waste Local Plans and Neighbourhood Plans.

The ‘development plan’ in the context of the Route Mapper and Toolkit is the local plan as prepared by a local planning authority. However, it is important to recognise that a council’s local plan is not always set out in one document but can comprise a number of different development plan documents such as a Core Strategy, Site Allocations development plan document, Development Management development plan document, Area Action Plan(s) and ’made’ Neighbourhood Plan(s).

The Local Plan Regulations 2012 (as amended) and other legislation prescribe the process for local plan preparation and some elements of its content. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how these should be applied. It provides a framework within which locally-prepared plans can provide for housing and other development in a sustainable manner. The NPPF is accompanied by National Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) which provides additional context and practical guidance on how to implement the NPPF.

Plan making takes place within the legal and policy framework described above. Responding to this framework and complying with legally prescribed processes is a core component of plan making. However, it need not inhibit creativity which is evident from the examples of good plan making across the country.

A local plan has multiple audiences: including other council services, communities, developers, agents, and infrastructure and service providers. It is a technical document for the purposes of decision making but also needs to be more than that. This creates unique challenges in producing plans that are simultaneously clear, effective and reflective of community aspirations, requiring a focus on problem solving both in the process of preparing the plan and within the plan itself.

Despite the breadth of issues in a plan, much of the debate at independent examinations will typically centre on housing, and the policy context for securing its delivery. Failure to deliver new homes is also the single matter most likely to trigger the need for a review of policies and update of a local plan. It will help ensure that the presumption in favour of sustainable development is not engaged.

The Route Mapper identifies the following six stages in updating a local plan:

1. Navigating the process of reviewing local plan policies
2. Scoping and preparing your local plan update
3. Developing the update to your local plan
4. Consulting and engaging on the update to your local plan
5. Developing the submission version of the local plan update
6. Independent examination and adoption

These are illustrated in diagram 1.

You should start your journey at the Route Mapper stage that relates to where you are in plan making.

The Route Mapper document is supplemented by the Toolkit. Signposts of when you may wish to use different parts of the Toolkit are also included in the Route Mapper. They are intended for use by plan makers as a way to assess and inform your next plan making steps.

The Toolkit is in the following four parts:

1. Local plan review assessment

A succinct form to help you to undertake a review of your plan policies to assess the need for a local plan update.

This can be used to help you address the requirement to review the local plan at least every five years and whether you then need to update your local plan either in part or in full.

2. Local plan form and content checklist

Helps you to assess the content requirements for local plans based on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

This can be used to check that your plan covers the matters prescribed in legislation, the NPPF and PPG when you are reviewing your local plan using part 1 of the Toolkit. It also provides a good final check point before you consult or engage under Regulation 18 or publish under Regulation 19 prior to its submission for independent examination.

3. Local plan process requirements checklist

A checklist of procedural requirements for preparing local plans and some of the most important project management implications arising from these.

This can help you with project planning and to check that you have complied with relevant legislation and regulations relating to how you should prepare and consult on a local plan update at each stage of plan making.

4. Local plan soundness and quality assessment

A local plan assessment matrix

Inspired by typical independent examination questions, this is not a checklist! It is a rigorous risk assessment tool that you can use to assess your level of confidence in your plan throughout the plan-making process. It will help you to identify and assess any problems and issues and to identify actions that may need to be taken to address these – and push beyond these to create a better plan. It is intended for use particularly in assessing the early drafts of the local plan and will also be beneficial to utilise before you publish the Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan update.

We would encourage you to undertake some form of independent review, particularly in relation to part 1 of the Toolkit, to check and challenge the robustness of your assessment. This could be undertaken, for example, either by another member of the planning service, or a colleague from another authority. PAS may be able to help you to access a Route Mapper Expert User from another local authority or some consultancy support.

Your existing local plan may already set out triggers which require you to undertake a review of your local plan policies in certain circumstances; you will need to revisit these as well as looking at broader matters that might influence the need for you to update your local plan. You will need to collect evidence to help you identify and consider whether:

• the vision, policy objectives and spatial strategy of your local plan are being effectively delivered
• your plan complies with changes to national planning policy and guidance
• there have been any local changes which have significant/material spatial implications for the strategy set out in your plan (which may include the implications of any made neighbourhood plans or changes in neighbouring authority areas).

Evidence gathering should be focused and proportionate drawing on existing data wherever possible. As a minimum this will mean reviewing:

• the NPPF and PPG
• your Authority Monitoring Report
• the outputs of the standard methodology in relation to housing need for your area and how it relates to your current requirement
• your Housing Delivery Test results
• your current five-year housing land supply position
• your Infrastructure Delivery Plan/Infrastructure Funding Statement.

Robust on-going monitoring can help to significantly reduce the time required, and cost of, gathering your initial evidence. We also suggest that you explore what monitoring information other parts of your authority (such as Housing Services and Environmental Health) or partners and organisations (such as Registered Providers and the Local Economic Partnership) gather, so that you can tap into this knowledge rather than duplicate it. This should then help you to identify if you need to undertake further work to either bring your evidence up to date or expand the matters that you monitor.

It is important to recognise that your local plan is one of a number of plans and strategies that comprise the Council’s statutory Policy Framework (others include the Council’s Annual Budget, Medium Term Financial Strategy and Corporate Plan) as well as its non-statutory policy framework such as housing, economic and regeneration strategies. It should provide the spatial dimension for delivering a Council’s ambitions for its place and so should not be developed in isolation. It can also be key to securing some financial stability for a local authority through income generation, reduction in revenue spending and attracting outside investment.

Within this context, the review of your local plan policies provides an opportunity to take a step back and consider what your council needs the local plan to support the delivery of. The decision on whether to update your local plan should also be informed by the degree to which the local plan relates to, and integrates with, the wider strategies of your council and its partners. The local plan provides an opportunity to bring together the spatial elements of other strategies and should be responsive to these. The plan should also reflect local ambitions and priorities, which may be contained in manifestos published by the council, such as climate change or net zero commitments.

Updating local plans can potentially have significant financial implications. One of the key corporate priorities should be to ensure that sufficient resources and budgets are in place to undertake an update to the local plan. In a time of ever-decreasing revenue funding in local authorities the challenges that this poses should not be underestimated.

Reviewing your local plan policies should not be undertaken in isolation. It is important to think about how any agencies or other local authorities will be impacted by (or will impact on) your review and discuss it with them. Do their plans and decisions have impacts for you now or vice versa? Do the emerging implications suggest the need for a joint plan? Local planning authorities need to comply with the Duty to Cooperate not just when updating a development plan document but also when reviewing policies within it. This is because this is deemed to be an activity under Paragraph (3)(d) of Section 33A of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 in that it paves the way for the preparation of development plan documents. It will be particularly important to consider the implications of any material changes in local housing need (using the outputs of the standard methodology) with other relevant authorities and agencies.

We would recommend that you then take a step back and consider what the evidence and any engagement is telling you about your local plan, including its strategy and objectives, whether it is being delivered and if it remains relevant in the context of national policy and local circumstances (see Diagram 2). You need to consider each policy as well as the local plan as a whole.

Where the plan does not comply with national policy – including in relation to delivering your local housing need requirement – you are likely to need to update your local plan (unless a departure from national policy can be justified). The starting point for deriving local housing need will be the application of the standard methodology. There is a clear expectation that significant changes in local housing need (with the measure of significance based on a comparison with the housing requirement set out in your adopted local plan) will result in the need to update your local plan. Any decision not to update your local plan where local housing need has significantly increased from that currently planned for will need to be clearly evidenced and justified.

If local circumstances suggest that a different strategy or strategic policy approach is required, you are likely to need to update your local plan. However, the judgement as to whether a partial update or a full update is appropriate may not be as clear cut. If the vision and objectives and the spatial strategy are still ‘fit for purpose’ and changes can be made to policies that do not affect these, a partial update to the plan is likely to be the most appropriate and proportionate approach.

It might even be the case that a local plan update is not the answer (or only part of it). Where your local plan complies with national planning policies and, there has been no significant change in local circumstances that would mean the plan is not ‘fit for purpose’, but if the plan is still not delivering as originally envisaged, you need to understand why this is the case and whether updating your local plan is necessary or would have any beneficial effect. For example, in the case of under delivery against a local plan target, is a change in plan strategy or policy necessary or are other interventions more appropriate to step up delivery? In the case of housing this might link to an action plan associated with the Housing Delivery Test.

You need to record and report on the outcomes of your assessment. Any report should give you and stakeholders clarity on:

• whether there is a need to update your local plan
• if there is a need to update the local plan what the scope and extent of that update will be.

If you are proposing a partial update, you should also make clear why it is possible to deal with the specific policy/policies or site allocation(s) in isolation without needing to update the rest of your local plan. The report must be clear on how you have arrived at this decision and your justification for this, with reference to the evidence. This is particularly critical where you have determined not to fully update your local plan.

It may not be possible (or appropriate) to publish a definitive list of the local plan policies that you will update following a review until you have undertaken the work to inform the actual update. Your review decision may therefore only indicate the type and degree of update to the local plan that is required.

Your approach to ‘formalising’ any decision as to whether or not to update your local plan will depend on the constitution of your local authority. The sign off process itself is not prescribed in legislation. The formal decision of the council that is taken should be published on your website to ensure the decision-making process is as transparent and open as possible. Once the decision has been made and you have developed a timeline for undertaking the update, you will then need to update your Local Development Scheme.

A need to review or update a local plan before the required five year period may arise. Ideally review triggers and monitoring indicators will have already been embedded within your local plan and reported on in your Authority Monitoring Report.

A good monitoring framework can save time and money. Identifying issues at an early stage may enable you to consider timely interventions to address them through means other than a local plan update.

Paragraph 20 in the NPPF sets out the key strategic matters that must be addressed in plans. However, authorities have significant discretion to decide what more detailed/non -strategic policies should be included such as site allocations, the provision of local infrastructure and community facilities, establishing design principles and so on. The NPPF is the starting point for determining the scope of your local plan update – but the local and corporate changes that might have led you to conclude that an update to the local plan is necessary should also be a significant factor in determining what your local plan needs to cover.

If you are in London, or part of an area with a mayoral or combined authority Spatial Development Strategy, there is a requirement to ensure your plan is in general conformity with it. This will affect the scoping stage. Where there are any made Neighbourhood Plans these also need to be factored into the scoping of your local plan update.

Before getting into the detail of the approach to updating your local plan, it is vital to consider whether the previous or existing spatial approach is still the most appropriate. If a full local plan update is needed, it might already be apparent that a joint plan is the most effective way of addressing cross boundary issues. Section 28 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 enables two or more local planning authorities to agree to prepare a joint local plan. A joint local plan may be more efficient than producing an individual local plan.

Equally, you need to consider whether or not the local plan update can be appropriately dealt with through a single development plan document, or whether a staged approach is necessary whereby a ‘parent’ or strategic plan is underpinned by subsequent and more detailed development plan documents. If your review has concluded that a partial local plan update is needed, an Area Action Plan or topic-based development plan document such as a Site Allocations or Development Management development plan document might be a more appropriate and proportionate approach.

There is no ‘one size-fits-all’ approach instead, the scoping stage provides you with the opportunity to establish the most appropriate approach, tailored to your local context and local plan making circumstances.

The legislative Duty to Cooperate starts now! Start to identify the cross-boundary matters that will be relevant to your plan and the authorities and organisations you need to engage with on these matters. Capture both the engagement but most critically the outcomes of this engagement in detail, as you will need this later in the plan making process and it will provide an essential audit trail of changes and decisions. Remember, an Inspector cannot remedy any deficiencies when it comes to the Duty to Cooperate legal compliance part of the independent examination. This is why it is normally the first matter that an Inspector will explore. From a practical perspective, detailed documentation will also be very helpful if there are staff changes during the life of the local plan’s development, and will also be beneficial in helping to ultimately inform and shape your authority’s Statement of Common Ground to help evidence that the Duty to Cooperate has been met.

We strongly recommend that you prepare a Project Initiation Document which sets out the scope of the local plan update (including all of the topics and policies that you consider are likely to need to be updated and/or the level of additional homes that will need to be accommodated), the form that the local plan update will take and the evidence that will need to be developed or updated to support this. The Project Initiation Document should then be used to develop a high-level timeline for delivery of the local plan and the budgets and staff resources likely to be needed (not just within the planning service but from elsewhere in the council and potentially from other public bodies) to see the project through to adoption. In doing so don’t forget to include the costs and resourcing of the independent examination itself. There will always be unknowns, including future changes to legislation and national policy and guidance, and some will need to be ‘guestimates’ (such as how long the independent examination is likely to last). However, this provides a structured way to plan your project management approach.

The Project Initiation Document should describe the scope of the local plan update. It should present the matters that the local plan update is intended to cover (linked to the review of policies and considering NPPF requirements on necessary local plan content) and highlight any possible cross boundary impacts.

You may find it beneficial to undertake engagement on the Project Initiation Document, potentially alongside Sustainability Appraisal scoping and changes to the Statement of Community Involvement, and/or as part of an initial stage of Regulation 18 issues and options consultation (see below). This will enable you to clearly articulate to stakeholders how you are planning to produce the local plan update and where appropriate enable them to factor in key stages of plan preparation and engagement into their work programmes. It would also provide an opportunity for stakeholders to comment on any aspects of the Project Initiation Document that may raise concern, helping to secure their buy-in to the process.

The Project Initiation Document should seek to:

• Identify which key stakeholders will need to be involved in developing the local plan including other council services and, in two-tier areas county council services, statutory consultees and neighbouring authorities and when they will need to be involved.
• Identify any new decision making/advisory structures (such as committees/working groups) which need to be formed to support the development of the local plan update, and whether the scheme of delegation needs to be updated. Consider the time that it will take to set these up.
• Be clear about the decision-making route at various stages and the lead-in times needed for the sign-off and publishing of reports.
• Factor in election periods and the preclusions on consulting or making decisions in the lead-up to them.
• Factor in the need to potentially bring new councillors or a new council administration up to speed following an election.
• Consider any implications of the (PINS): Procedure Guide for Local Plan Examinations 2024.
• Identify the likely evidence needed based on the scope of the plan.
• The resource requirements needed including for consultation and for the development of the evidence base.
• Undertake a realistic assessment of the time needed to procure any evidence that needs to be produced by consultants including writing the brief, the approach to procurement followed by your council (which is likely to be determined by the likely financial costs) which can increase the time taken.
• Undertake a realistic assessment of the time for the different elements of the evidence base to be finalised (including factoring in time to review and seek changes on drafts).
• Build in plenty of time for the development of the update to the local plan document itself so that you can be satisfied that it is of a high quality and has addressed the issues and opportunities it needs to, including a clear link between the Vision and Objectives, Spatial Strategy, Strategic policies and if included the non-strategic policies and site allocations and that you have the evidence to support your approach.
• Build in sufficient time between any initial consultation and engagement and the publication of your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan to be able to properly consider responses. Experience from previous local plans and current local knowledge can help provide some understanding of the likely scale of responses that you will receive to inform this element of the timeline.
• Reviewing your Statement of Community Involvement and the intended approach to consultation.
• Include a risk register which should consider the impacts of unforeseen changes in circumstances and ensure that any necessary mitigation measures are identified. Incorporating contingency into future project planning both in terms of budgets and timescales may be pragmatic. You should consider highlighting mitigation measures.

Using the evidence collated through the process of reviewing local plan policies, work with your senior leadership team and with councillors to think about what you want the local plan update to achieve. This will benefit from setting up working/advisory groups or a series of workshops.

This engagement is not just about generating a vision statement – it is an open and honest conversation about the challenges that may lie ahead and potential compromises needed in order to achieve a sound local plan which delivers better places for your communities. This includes, where appropriate, the setting of objectives and development of high-level spatial approaches. These discussions with your senior leadership team and councillors need to be set within the context of the regulatory framework and requirements of national planning policy and guidance. In particular, review the NPPF and pull out the ‘musts’ and ‘shoulds’ that are relevant to the scope of your policies update. Part 2 of the Toolkit will help you do this.

Supplement engagement with ‘intelligence’ on what is going on locally. For instance, you can use resident surveys undertaken by the council as part of its on-going engagement with residents, speak to ward councillors where this would be beneficial, relevant officers in other council services and community groups, and undertake social media research to understand what the issues are for your local communities. What are the top concerns and priorities? This does not need to be a large scale, extensive or costly exercise (unless you think it is necessary). But you do need to get a handle on key community issues.

Too often, the Sustainability Appraisal process, which must incorporate the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive, remains detached from the actual plan-making journey. This can result in duplication and become a tick box approach to meeting the legislative requirements, rather than being used as a tool for testing the development of your plan from an environmental, social and economic perspective. The Sustainability Appraisal process should be at the heart of plan-making, and be carefully scoped and considered from the outset. The Scoping Stage should also ideally consider and incorporate any requirements to undertake a Habitats Regulations Assessment if this is needed. PAS has produced a Guide to Better Sustainability Appraisal, which we recommend you review.

This approach can start at the project planning stage by combining your Sustainability Appraisal Scoping report with the scoping of the local plan process itself. This can allow for consultation (either targeted or broad in nature) on a combined scoping report, which sets out the Sustainability Appraisal objectives together with the intended scope and nature of the local plan update.

Consultation and engagement on relevant aspects of the Project Initiation Document and the Sustainability Appraisal Scoping report should enable you to seek agreement from statutory consultees (and a wider audience if appropriate), that your approach is robust – both in terms of forming the basis for the preparation of the local plan update and the Sustainability Appraisal process which will inform it. It may also help to seek buy-in and commitment to participate and inform the preparation of the local plan update by informing the future work programmes and resource planning for key external delivery partners and consultees.

Incorporation of the Sustainability Appraisal into the local plan update in this way will help to support genuine ‘options’ generation, where relevant, through the Sustainability Appraisal process, in addition to improved policy formulation and drafting. The Sustainability Appraisal process is central to the development of spatial strategy alternatives – which is an essential component of plan making.

We recommend that a detailed consultation and engagement plan is developed which expands on the approaches that are set out in your Statement of Community Involvement. The formal consultation stages should be reflected in the Project Initiation Document. This is the ‘Regulation 18’ consultation and engagement that you will undertake before publication of your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan. At the Regulation 19 stage you are publishing your local plan in order to seek representations into the soundness and legal compliance of the local plan ahead of the independent examination, rather than consulting on it.

Your approach to consultation and engagement on the local plan update, as prescribed under Regulation 18, should be driven by the scope of the update required – including whether it is a full or partial update of the local plan, your local circumstances, and your Statement of Community Involvement. In developing your consultation and engagement plan, you will need to consider whether:

• an issues and options style consultation setting out local challenges and high-level options is necessary and will add value, or
• a more targeted engagement on the scope of the local plan is more effective and appropriate, and/or
• if consultation on a full draft of the local plan update is appropriate at this stage.

For each stage of consultation that you have decided is necessary, you should be clear about what you are looking to find out to inform the development of the local plan update and the methods that will ensure that the approach you take is both effective and inclusive to secure the proper representation of a range of community interests. It is also important to consider how you will effectively engage statutory consultees and Duty to Cooperate bodies at key stages of the development of the local plan update.

Developing the Project Initiation Document and a consultation and engagement plan will help to inform any updates that may be required to your Local Development Scheme and Statement of Community Involvement, the latter also required to be reviewed within five years of its adoption. A requirement of the local plan review process is an update and publication on your website of your Local Development Scheme. This is a requirement under Section 15 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended). This must specify the development plan documents (i.e. local plan) which will comprise part of the development plan for the area and includes a timeline for production – so communities and interested parties (including the Planning Inspectorate) can keep track of progress. 

Following consultation, you may need to alter the Project Initiation Document to reflect comments received. You can then produce and publish your updated Local Development Scheme. By consulting on relevant aspects of the Project Initiation Document, the Council and other stakeholders in the local plan will be able to commit to the updated Local Development Scheme timetable with a much greater degree of confidence and certainty than may otherwise have been the case. The Sustainability Appraisal objectives can then be finalised, enabling options generation and policy development to commence. The final scoping report should also confirm how any requirement for a Habitats Regulations Assessment will be met.

Depending upon the outcome of the review of local plan policies and confirmation on the process of consultation and engagement to be followed as part of the local plan update process, it may be necessary and/or beneficial to update the Statement of Community Involvement. This will ensure that future consultation and engagement will be meaningful, proportionate and effective, reducing the potential for historic requirements to remain which may be onerous, unnecessary, and ineffective which could ultimately stifle the efficiency or effectiveness of stakeholder involvement in the local plan process.

There are broadly two types of evidence documents:

• those that inform the preparation of local plan policies and site allocations
• those that assess the impacts of local plan policies and site allocations, such as the Sustainability Appraisal, Habitats Regulations Assessment, Viability Assessment and Infrastructure Delivery Plan.

There may be a need for engagement with statutory consultees and other key stakeholders including local groups, infrastructure providers and developers (as appropriate) on the approach to collating the evidence, including the methodology to be utilised and any key baseline assumptions to be used. For some types of evidence this is an essential component of the methodology.

As set out in the NPPF and reflected in the PAS advice on proportionate evidence, you should be focused on collating or commissioning only what is absolutely necessary to develop your local plan. The focus has to be on robust approaches to evidence without falling into the trap of developing masses of unnecessary documentation. See PAS Evidence Base Top Tips, based on advice given to councils.

Your next step is to continue the discussions on high level options with senior leadership team and councillors on your vision and strategy. Depending on the scope of the local plan update you will want to extend engagement to other key stakeholders including departments within your authority and individuals/organisations beyond, and may also extend to targeted engagement with local groups including Town and Parish Councils, designated neighbourhood plan forums, Tenant and Resident Associations and potentially topic-based focus groups such as with infrastructure and service providers, as well as those groups typically less represented in planning. This could include meetings, focus groups or workshops virtually or in person.

Where appropriate, this targeted early engagement could be in place of consultation on a direction of travel or Issues and Options style document. However, there may still be instances where a formal ‘Issues and Options’ route is more appropriate. Any consultation and engagement with the public should be integrated and coordinated with wider authority communication and consultation channels.

There may also be value in engaging with any in-house specialists or consultants such as in relation to the Sustainability Appraisal, Habitats Regulations Assessment or Viability Assessment in defining – and not just assessing – the strategy.

If you are undertaking a partial or full local plan update, you will need to identify options and where possible ‘reasonable’ alternatives to the approach you are taking. This won’t always mean starting from scratch – local plan visions, objectives and strategies might still be fit for purpose or provide a reasonable option.

This testing of options and alternatives is a critical element of your Sustainability Appraisal and one which is likely to be heavily scrutinised during consultation and as part of the independent examination on the plan. It is therefore essential to ensure that options development is fully integrated with your Sustainability Appraisal process. Use your Sustainability Appraisal to help identify and test the options for Plan production as part of a process to inform the selection of ‘preferred’ options, rather than retrofitting the Sustainability Appraisal once a preferred route has been decided.

This part of the journey is your real opportunity to focus on the quality of the local plan update that you are developing. It is your chance to bring all of the work that you have undertaken together and demonstrate how your local plan update can make a positive difference to the area you are planning for. How you approach its drafting can either produce a document which is vibrant, energetic and positive or which downplays the opportunities to address your area’s challenges and attributes. 

One of the biggest challenges to achieving a high-quality local plan update is that you are preparing a document which is intended for multiple audiences, from decision makers and applicants through to infrastructure providers and neighbourhood planning groups. It can also influence investors decisions on where they believe their funding can be used to best effect.

Ultimately, local plans are there to provide the framework for decision making in your area within the context of the ‘plan led system’. It therefore must be based on evidence and meet the soundness and legal compliance tests. In doing so it needs to ‘tell the story’ of your place and what the local plan update is trying to achieve. This is a key part of how you should articulate the Vision, Objectives and spatial strategy within the local plan update. Consequently, whether you are preparing a full or partial update to the local plan this strategic element always needs to be referred back to so that you can ‘sense-check’ the more detailed parts of the document to make sure that it is justified and clear.

Policies need to be clear and robust and be underpinned by your evidence. It is essential that you work with development management colleagues (and if appropriate developers and other stakeholders) to test the policies to make sure they can actually be used to achieve what you want them to achieve. If at all possible test these against ‘real world’ examples to help ensure that there are no unintended consequences when applying them.

Policies should be clearly written and unambiguous, so that it is evident how a decision maker should react to development proposals and ensure consistency in decision making. Wherever possible they should be positively worded. They should enable an applicant to be very clear as to what is expected from any development proposal submitted to the council. They should also be relevant in terms of the scale of development that the policy applies to. Not all development will be of a scale or type that can support some policy requirements and the way you word your policies will need to reflect this.

Statements that amount to policy requirements or have a direct effect on the development should be set out within the policy itself, not in the supporting text. Conversely, statements of intent that are just about what the Council is going to do but don’t have any bearing on what an applicant is required to do should not be included within policy but in the supporting text.

It is important that policies are in general conformity with national policy and where possible use the same terms. Local planning authorities’ own interpretation of national policy on matters such as Green Belt, heritage assets and the loss of open space can cause confusion, potentially resulting in the need for main modifications to be made to plan policies through independent examination. However, avoid repetition of policies (and national planning policy) wherever possible. Cross referencing to policies within other policies is very rarely necessary or useful. Statutory consultees, and officers in other council departments can have a particular role not just in ensuring that the policies update takes the right approach but in supporting the development of concise and clear policies that avoid repetition.

Many plans can become unnecessarily lengthy because of the extent of the supporting text (sometimes called ‘reasoned justification’ or ‘explanatory text’) provided in relation to each policy. Any supporting text (which has weight but not the same legal status as the policy itself) should be focussed on setting the context and justification for the policy and, where appropriate, provide further explanation as to how it is intended to operate. For policies which are ‘allocating‘ sites, the requirements of the development of a particular site should be set out in the policy itself rather than in the supporting text, particularly if it relates to site specific requirements.

You should challenge yourself about the number of policies and the length of the local plan update. It does not need to be overly long. The more policies you have and the longer the supporting text the greater potential there is to be confusing, lose the sense of ‘story’ of the local plan, and create potential issues of legal challenge if something gets ‘missed’ when making a decision on a planning application. Text which may be required to provide explanation and justification to support the policies update at independent examination (as opposed to future decision making) may usefully be included within supporting documents rather than within the policies update document itself.

You need to clearly present the overall spatial strategy, policies, allocations and Policies Map in a way that can be understood by, decision-makers, applicants, infrastructure providers, local businesses, and local residents. At this stage you may want to think about online access and the interoperability (i.e. the degree to which computer systems or software can exchange and make use of information) of your plan content both for the consultation, publication and eventual adoption stage. If you have the resources, an interactive Policies Map will aid users and should reduce the level of enquiries received. MHCLG have also published guidance on how to present your policies map.

Engagement with other bodies and organisations is likely to be needed in developing the evidence base. The obvious and legally prescribed requirement for this is in relation to the Sustainability Appraisal and Habitats Regulation Assessments. It is also a practical necessity for developing other evidence documents such as an Infrastructure Delivery Plan and Viability Assessment. Building in testing of assumptions and costs – particularly in relation to strategic sites is important to ensure the viability of plan policies and deliverability of site allocations.

You also need to have clear evidence to support your assumptions on housing delivery rates. It is crucial that you can explain and justify how the local plan update will provide for a five-year supply of specific deliverable housing sites against the housing requirement (and appropriate buffer) on adoption. If it is not possible to demonstrate a five-year land supply on adoption you may need to consider incorporating a ‘stepped’ housing trajectory into your local plan update.

This would provide for a stepped approach to meeting local housing needs with the housing requirement varying over the course of the plan period to reflect constraints in housing land supply and/or delivery during the early years. However, such an approach should only be contemplated where compelling evidence exists to justify it, and you can demonstrate that the use of a ‘stepped’ trajectory is legitimately required to enable local housing needs to be met in full over the plan period and maintain a plan led approach.

The development of the evidence base can be left too late in the plan making process – outputs should be available to accompany the publication of your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan.

At this stage it is advisable to formalise the ‘Statements of Common Ground’ that provide the evidence for the legal Duty to Cooperate. Further PAS guidance on this is set out in PAS Statement of Common Ground draft advice and template. These are different to the independent examination topic based ‘Statements of Common Ground’ which can aid the independent examination process by addressing outstanding concerns received through representations received during plan-making.

The Plan should include clarity on how future reviews of the local plan will be undertaken. You may decide that including detail on how you will approach ‘Local Plan Review of policies’ may assist by setting out exactly how and when the Council will seek to undertake future reviews, and how the Council will determine whether updates to the local plan will be required. Policy objectives and targets need to be clear, as do the triggers for review. Any actions identified in response to these triggers need to be effective to remedy the identified failure to hit targets. Such an approach will assist by providing clarity to all stakeholders and users of the Plan and reducing the potential for ambiguity in future reviews of the local plan.

It is never too early to consider whether your local plan meets the independent examination ‘tests’ of whether it is a ‘sound’ plan as set out in national policy. In practical terms after the publication of your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan it is too late. Once you start developing your policies update, start thinking about whether it is ‘sound’ right away.

Checking the soundness of plans requires engagement with delivery partners such as infrastructure providers and strategic site promoters/developers. You need to ensure that the housing delivery strategy of the local plan update is supported by robust, up to date evidence. It is particularly important to ensure that careful consideration is given to developing robust and realistic assumptions on future delivery rates for housing and in establishing funding and delivery arrangements for infrastructure required to support planned growth. Your dialogue, and any decisions reached, with delivery partners should be captured as they may be helpful later as an ‘audit trail’ including in the development of any examination focused Statements of Common Ground.

Consultation should be in line with your Statement of Community Involvement and any more detailed consultation and engagement plan which you may have developed. Giving careful consideration to the approach and methods for inviting and collating comments is important to ensure that the consultation is openly accessible, but that the processing and analysis of responses will be as agile and efficient as possible. The use of on-line surveys and feedback forms can encourage targeted responses whilst also helping to improve the efficiency of processing and analysing feedback received.

You need to keep a record of all parties you have contacted. During the consultation there is value in meeting with relevant statutory consultees to get an early insight into issues, explain what the local plan and relevant policies are trying to achieve and highlight relevant aspects of the evidence base or justification. Talking through queries and issues informally can assist statutory consultees by significantly reducing the time they need to spend in reviewing documentation on-line, whilst also helping to avoid the potential for misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the local plan which can significantly elongate the plan-making and independent examination process. Developing a collaborative approach in this manner may seem time-consuming, but ultimately it will assist, and form the basis for presenting an agreed approach through a Statement of Common Ground at the independent examination.

Now you need to start to review the responses you have received and decide on how to amend the emerging local plan approach. The time this takes will again depend on the approach that you are taking to your local plan update (i.e. a full or partial update). Diagram 3 outlines a process you may wish to follow.

One way to deal with this is to break down responses received into the specific issues (or codes). Record each of the comments received in a database along with who made the comment, their agent and contact information. Then for each comment, ‘code’ it by its theme and the policy/plan area to identify key issues and actions required in response. This might include whether new evidence is needed to test or revise approaches. Categorising comments received will help you to identify and quantify the key issues or themes emerging, and also enable you to take a considered and consistent approach to responding to the key issues and themes identified.

The consultation approach should be documented in a consultation report, setting out the bodies and persons invited to comment, a summary of the responses received, identification of key issues/themes identified through analysis, and the responses to these. This should include reference to how the local plan will be amended and where any further evidence base work may be required. You should also include in the report all of the methods that you used to make people aware of the consultation ranging from statutory requirements through to the use of council e-bulletins and social media. In doing so you need to make sure that you are complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Production of a consultation report is important in order to report back on the consultation process in an open and transparent way, but also to inform the production of your Consultation Statement.

Depending on the issues arising from your consultation and engagement, there may also be a need to undertake further targeted or wider engagement or evidence base collation in order to inform the production of the Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan. This may include workshops with internal officers, statutory consultees, and key stakeholders including locally constituted community groups and designated neighbourhood plan forums.

As far as possible you should seek to resolve any outstanding issues with statutory consultees and stakeholders in local plan delivery (including infrastructure providers, strategic site promoters/major housebuilders) before the Regulation 19 stage.

The amount of work that you need to do at this stage will depend on whether you are developing a full or a partial local plan update, and how you approached your consultation and engagement at the Regulation 18 stage. You will need to prepare your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan update having had regard to consultation and engagement undertaken at the Regulation 18 stage and ensure that any delivery assumptions are adjusted as required to ensure that they remain robust and justified in light of the evidence. A final Sustainability Appraisal report and, if relevant, your Habitats Regulations Assessment will need to be prepared and there may be a need to update evidence documents where you have changed policies or approaches as a result of the consultation. You will need to ensure that key evidence base documents which support and demonstrate the deliverability of the local plan update at independent examination, such as the Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, Infrastructure Delivery Plan and Viability Assessment, are sufficiently up-to-date, comprehensive and robust.

You should ensure you have resolved as far as you can any outstanding issues from statutory consultees and Duty to Cooperate bodies. Record this in your Statement(s) of Common Ground which should capturethe process of engagement, the outcomes of this engagement and clarify areas of agreement and difference.

Publication of your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan update and the supporting documents intended for submission, including the consultation statement and evidence, should be considered as the start of the independent examination process. You should be satisfied at this point that the Plan policies will be ‘sound’ and legally compliant and that no further changes will need to be made prior to submission for independent examination. The purpose of this stage is to publish the updated local plan and invite the submission of (Regulation 20) representations to be considered by the Inspector as part of the independent examination. You may wish to use this model representation form for Local Plans.

Early practical actions should be taken to get ready for an independent examination. This might include:

• finalising the appointment of the Inspector with the Planning Inspectorate
• finalising arrangements for the programme officer to be in place
• setting up an examination website
• organising training for officers in the team who do not have any recent independent examination experience
• being prepared to write to the Inspector once they have been appointed requesting that they propose any modifications necessary to make the policies update sound.

The PINS Procedure Guide for Local Plan Examinations 2024 sets out the documents that need to be submitted and the form that these should take (including the submission of Regulation 19 representations). A key task at this stage will be to review any representations received and create a main issues summary and indicate the Council response to these. This may extend to proposed main modifications that are considered necessary to make the plan sound and / or legally compliant for the Inspector to consider and recommend (or any additional consequential modifications that arise).

The PINS guidance also offers advice on when further publicity of proposed changes will be required.

Examination focussed Statements of Common Ground are a useful tool in taking a collaborative approach to responding to any issues raised through Regulation 20 representations received from statutory consultees and key stakeholders. They can help to provide a focus for the Inspector as to what the main outstanding issues are. Taking such an approach helps to minimise both time taken during hearing sessions and the time needed for officers to prepare. We would strongly advise that you start developing Statement of Common Grounds with relevant stakeholders as soon as possible after the close of the period for receiving representations on your Regulation 19 Submission Local Plan (if not before). This allows:

• proper time to consider and explore ways forward
• the opportunity to provide further information if necessary
• for recognition that other organisations will have their own internal sign-off processes which are not always speedy.

Hearings are only a part of the independent examination. A substantial part of the examination takes place in writing. Commonly the Inspector will, before the start of the independent examination Hearing Sessions, send initial questions and comments to the Council to respond to before issuing a schedule of ‘Matters, Issues and Questions’ for all respondents to consider. The Council’s response to initial questions received can help the Inspector to understand the issues more clearly, point them towards relevant documents and pieces of evidence, and can also enable some of the necessary main modifications to be drafted to potentially avoid unnecessary discussion at the hearings. Responses should be focused on aiding the Inspector so that their ‘Matters, Issues and Questions’ can be as well informed and focussed as possible.

When responding to ‘Matters, Issues and Questions’ received from the Inspector, we advise that you develop a standard template and that each question or sub-question is set out and responded to separately and succinctly. Understand the question being asked and answer it right at the start. To assist the Inspector we recommend that you support your response by referencing back to the Plan (including associated supporting text), the evidence base or other plans and documents (including the NPPF and PPG) and include a signpost to the document reference, paragraph number(s) and page number(s). You should not include anything that cannot be substantiated.

Consider ahead of the independent examination which officers, and potentially consultants, will need to lead on drafting responses to each of the ‘Matters Issues and Questions’ and who will lead on presenting these at the Hearing Session. Consider whether other officers and/or consultants might be needed to support those presenting (typically sitting on a row of chairs behind so they are able to pass relevant documents or notes) and if additional assistance may be required to organise printing of documents.

Carefully consider whether you require specialist legal advice to support your team through the examination process. If appointing a suitably experienced barrister it is advisable to ensure that they are instructed as early as possible and that they will be available for the duration of the hearings.
 

The Planning Inspector will work with the Council to help finalise the schedule of main modifications and will help the Council to distinguish between main and ‘minor’ or (sometimes known ‘additional’ modifications). Main modifications are changes to the Local Plan that are required to resolve any soundness or legal compliance issues identified by the Inspector. Minor modifications are often only factual updates and clarifications.

The PINS Procedure Guide for Local Plan Examinations 2024 highlights the process that you need to follow.

Following adoption, as prescribed in legislation, the implementation of the local plan must be monitored. There is a requirement for councils to report at least annually on progress with local plan making, any activity relating to the Duty to Cooperate and on indicators related to local plan implementation to help assess any local plans that are not being implemented. Where you have prepared a joint local plan, there may be value in aligning information sources and adopting consistent monitoring sources and approaches to capture data.