The development plan: what counts and what does not

The development plan meaning is set by statute, not by custom, and the list is shorter than most people assume. Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 says the development plan for an area consists of the development plan documents adopted by the local planning authority, any neighbourhood plans that have been made for that area, and, in Greater London, the spatial development strategy prepared by the Mayor. That is the plan. Everything else, however official it looks, is a material consideration rather than part of it.

The distinction decides arguments in committee rooms every week, so it is worth getting straight before you write an objection or a supporting statement.

What is in and what is out

In: the adopted local plan, any adopted area action plans or site allocations documents, the minerals and waste plan for the area (often prepared by a county council and easy to forget), a made neighbourhood plan, and the London Plan for the 32 boroughs and the City of London.

Out: the National Planning Policy Framework, Planning Practice Guidance, supplementary planning documents, design guides and codes unless adopted as part of a plan document, conservation area appraisals, emerging draft plans, planning briefs, committee reports, and any council strategy that has not gone through the development plan document process.

Being out does not mean being irrelevant. National policy carries considerable weight and can outweigh the plan. It just does not enjoy the statutory status the plan has.

What the statutory duty actually requires

Section 38(6) of the 2004 Act requires that a determination be made in accordance with the plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise, and section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires regard to be had to the plan so far as it is material. Together they create what people call the plan-led system.

The practical consequence is a sequence rather than a balance from scratch. Identify the relevant plan policies, decide whether the proposal accords with them, then ask whether other material considerations displace that starting point. The article on why the local plan comes first works through that duty in more detail.

Saved policies from older plans

Local plans do not vanish neatly. When the 2004 Act changed the plan-making system, policies from old-style local plans, unitary development plans and structure plans were saved by direction, and many of those saved policies are still in force in authorities that have not yet adopted a replacement.

A saved policy is part of the development plan and carries the same statutory status as a policy adopted last year. What it may not carry is the same weight, because a policy written against a superannuated version of national policy can be inconsistent with the current Framework, and inconsistency reduces weight.

So check two things for every policy you cite: whether it has been saved or superseded, and how well it sits with current national policy. Councils publish a table of saved and deleted policies, usually as an appendix to the adopted plan.

Neighbourhood plans

A neighbourhood plan becomes part of the development plan once it has been made by the local planning authority, which happens after examination and a successful referendum. Before that point it is an emerging document with weight increasing as it advances.

Made neighbourhood plans surprise applicants. They can allocate sites, set design requirements, protect local green space and impose standards the borough-wide plan does not, and they have full statutory status within their designated area. Check whether one covers the site before doing anything else, because the boundaries do not follow ward or parish lines in every case.

Where a made neighbourhood plan and an older local plan conflict, the later document generally prevails, though a partial conflict has to be worked through policy by policy.

Neighbourhood plans also affect money. A made plan raises the share of the Community Infrastructure Levy passed to the parish or neighbourhood forum, which is one reason communities push them through. That is a funding point rather than a decision-making one, but it explains why some plans appear quickly in areas facing large allocations.

Why supplementary documents sit outside

Supplementary planning documents expand on policies in the adopted plan. Householder design guides, parking standards, affordable housing and viability guidance, shopfront guides. They go through consultation but not through independent examination, and they cannot introduce new policy or new requirements that are not grounded in an adopted plan policy.

That limit is the useful point for an applicant. A supplementary document is a material consideration and will be given weight, but where it goes beyond what the parent policy says, it can be argued down. Where it simply explains how a plan policy will be applied, arguing about its status wastes everyone's time.

Design codes have complicated this a little, because the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 provides for design codes to be given a stronger status in the plan-making system. Check how a particular code was adopted before deciding which category it falls into.

Weight given to emerging policies

Emerging plans are not part of the development plan, and yet they influence decisions constantly. The Framework sets out the factors that determine how much weight an emerging policy carries: the stage the plan has reached, the extent of unresolved objections to the relevant policies, and the degree of consistency with national policy.

The practical reading is that a submitted plan with an examination concluded and no outstanding objections to the policy in question is close to decisive, while a policy in a first-draft consultation document with two hundred objections is worth very little.

Applicants sometimes try to have this both ways, relying on an emerging policy that helps and dismissing one that does not. Officers notice.

Reading the plan as a whole

Conflict with one policy does not put a proposal in conflict with the plan. The courts have been consistent on this since the House of Lords decision in City of Edinburgh Council v Secretary of State for Scotland in 1997: the plan is read as a whole, and the decision maker judges accordance overall, weighing the policies that pull in different directions.

The Supreme Court added the other half of the picture in Tesco Stores v Dundee City Council in 2012. Interpreting what a policy means is a question of law for the court, while applying it to the facts is a matter of planning judgement for the decision maker. So an applicant can properly argue that an officer has misread a policy, and cannot get far arguing that the officer weighed it wrongly.

Write the plan analysis in a Planning Statement the same way. List the relevant policies including the ones against, say how the proposal performs against each, and reach a conclusion on overall accordance rather than counting policies for and against. Policies on housing mix and unit sizes, for instance, often pull against a site's constraints, and the article on how councils set unit size policy shows how those requirements are framed.

One honest caveat. Whether a proposal accords with the plan as a whole is a matter of planning judgement, which means two reasonable planners can reach different answers on the same facts. That is not a flaw in the system. It is why the reasoning has to be written down.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.