How to get involved in local plan making

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Is a review planned or underway

Look for forthcoming planning policies. These may be listed in pages covering Consultations, Planning policy or Local Plan. Some local authorities have dedicated consultation pages on their website, not in the planning service pages.

• Sign up to receive notifications of forthcoming consultations from your council.

To find out what stage local plan making is at, look for the following publications on the planning authority’s webpages.

• Local Development Scheme - outlines the work programme for preparing the local plan (although the timetable is not always kept right up to date).
• Statement of Community Involvement - outlines how the public will be involved in the planning process.

You will need to know what stage of the local plan making process your authority is at. There are 3 formal stages:

Stage 1: Public consultation on Issues

• Early stage of local plan making or local plan review
• Opportunity to make sure food growing is covered by policy.

Stage 2: Consultation on the draft Local Plan (Pre-submission stage)

• Draft Local plan produced
• Final opportunities to influence policy if the draft local plan does not adequately reflect your objectives or capture the development opportunities to create more food growing space.

Stage 3: Examination of the planning policies

• The opportunity if necessary, to present your case to the local plan’s inspector at its examination, suggesting the wording you would like to see and making the case that the local plan will otherwise be “unsound”.

These three stages are covered in the local plan making section of this toolkit.