The 30 month plan timetable and plan making gateways

The plan making reform timetable in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 sets an ambition of a local plan prepared, examined and adopted within 30 months, with independent gateway checks along the way instead of a single examination at the end. For anyone promoting sites, the practical questions are narrower: which regime does the plan you care about sit under, when does that change, and what does it do to the housing land supply argument you are currently running.

As at September 2026 the detail of the new system depends on regulations and national policy that continue to be developed, so verify what is actually in force on gov.uk before advising. What follows is the shape of the reform and how to work with it.

What the reformed process is designed to do

The diagnosis behind the reform is that local plans take too long and are too often abandoned. Under the current arrangements a plan can run for seven or eight years, and a change in evidence, a change in administration or a difficult examination can send it back to the start with several years of work lost.

The reform attacks that in three ways. It compresses the timetable to a target of 30 months. It replaces the duty to cooperate, which produced procedural failures at examination after years of work, with an alignment requirement. And it moves generic development management policies out of local plans into National Development Management Policies, so that plans concentrate on what is locally specific.

The intended consequence is shorter plans, produced faster, with a common data standard so that site allocations, constraints and evidence are held in a comparable form nationally.

The gateway assessments

The gateways are the structural change that matters most, and they are the reason the timetable might hold.

Rather than testing a plan once, at examination, the new process introduces checkpoints during preparation at which an independent assessor reviews progress. As designed, there are three: an early gateway looking at the timetable, scope and evidence plan; a middle gateway looking at the draft plan and the evidence supporting it; and a pre-submission gateway testing whether the plan is ready for examination.

The point of each is to surface a fatal problem while it is still fixable. A plan whose housing figure rests on an unsound assumption is far better challenged eighteen months in than at a hearing four years later.

For a consultant, that changes where effort goes. Representations made at or before a gateway can shape the evidence base rather than merely arguing about a conclusion already reached. Watch the authority's published timetable for gateway dates and treat them as the points of maximum influence.

Plans prepared under the old system

Transitional arrangements are the practical heart of this for the next few years, because most authorities are somewhere in the middle of an existing plan.

The broad approach is that plans reaching a specified stage by a specified date continue under the existing regime, and those that do not must be prepared under the new one. That means three groups: plans already adopted, plans that will be submitted for examination in time, and plans that will have to restart.

Establish which group your authority falls into, and get the answer from the authority's Local Development Scheme rather than from an officer's recollection. The Local Development Scheme is a published document that must set out the timetable, and it is the first place a gateway assessor or an inspector will look.

Where a plan is at risk of missing the cut-off, expect the authority to accelerate, and expect the quality of consultation to suffer as it does so. That is when representations are least likely to be considered carefully and most likely to be relevant at examination.

What it does to housing land supply arguments

Supply arguments depend on plan age and on the deliverability of the sites the plan relies on, so a change in plan making rhythm changes the ground under them.

Three effects are worth thinking through. A newly adopted plan resets the clock, so authorities racing to adopt under the old system will close the window on supply-based arguments in their area sooner than expected. More frequent plan updates, which is what a 30 month cycle is meant to produce, mean fewer authorities sitting with plans old enough to be treated as out of date. And where the relevant policies for determining an application are out of date, the presumption in favour of sustainable development continues to do the work it always has.

None of that removes the argument. It changes its timing. A site whose prospects depend on a supply shortfall needs its application in while the shortfall exists, not after the plan is adopted, and the difference between those two moments may now be twelve months rather than four years.

Check the current national policy wording on supply, buffers and the treatment of out of date policies before relying on any of it. The Framework has been reissued more than once in recent years, and the correct way to reference the current edition is set out in citing the NPPF after the move to policy codes.

Engaging with a plan in transition

Work to the plan's actual timetable rather than to the statutory minimum.

1. Read the Local Development Scheme and diarise every consultation and gateway date in it.
2. Respond at the early stages on evidence and methodology, not only at publication stage on the site allocation you want.
3. Keep representations short and evidenced. A gateway assessor reading several hundred responses will notice a two page note with a technical appendix and skim a forty page objection.
4. Submit site information in whatever standard format the authority requests, because data-led plan making penalises promoters who send PDFs when a schema was asked for.
5. Register for the examination and attend the relevant hearing sessions, since matters not raised in writing are hard to introduce later.
6. Track main modifications after the hearings, which is the last point at which a plan changes.

Where a plan is likely to restart under the new system, keep the evidence base alive rather than archiving it. Ecology surveys, highway capacity work and flood modelling all age, and refreshing a two year old survey costs far less than commissioning it again. Spatial evidence moves too: a site's relationship to the priorities in a local nature recovery strategy is now part of what a plan maker weighs when comparing allocations.

Promoting a site under two regimes at once

Plenty of promoters are currently doing exactly this: arguing for an allocation in a plan being finished under the old rules while preparing for a plan that may restart under the new ones.

Keep the case portable. Write the site submission so that its evidence stands independently of the plan's structure, with separate sections on suitability, availability and achievability, each supported by a document that could be updated on its own. Avoid framing everything around the current plan's policy numbering, which will not survive.

Run the application route in parallel where the site is capable of it. An allocation is not a permission, and a planning application can proceed while a plan is being examined, particularly where supply arguments are available.

And watch for withdrawal. When an authority withdraws a plan, allocations disappear overnight and the evidence base becomes a set of documents with no status. Promoters who have kept their own evidence current recover from that quickly. Those who relied on the authority's work do not.

Checking the current position

Three sources answer the question of what is in force, and they should agree.

The legislation itself on legislation.gov.uk shows which provisions have been brought into force. National planning practice guidance on plan making sets out the operative process and any transitional arrangements. And the authority's own Local Development Scheme states which regime its plan is being prepared under.

Where those three disagree, the legislation and the guidance govern, and the discrepancy is worth raising with the authority in writing. Follow changes as they land through the planning law timeline, and check the position again before you rely on it in a representation or at a hearing.

PlanScope drafts Planning Statements and supporting documents structured to UK planning policy, with clear flags where local plan status, housing supply figures and site evidence still need to be confirmed. Browse the report types to see what a site promotion or application is likely to need. Reports are AI-assisted drafts that should be reviewed before submission, and we do not guarantee planning approval. This article is general guidance, not legal advice, and reflects the position as at September 2026.