The public consultation on the draft Basildon Local Plan closed on Sunday 12 January 2025.
The consultation and the comments made can still be viewed here.
Basildon council will now start work on a final version of the Local Plan.
That plan will go to the council cabinet (a subset of the ruling administration) and full council (all 42 ward councillors) for agreement to move to the Regulation 19 public consultation stage. That is a democratic vote based simply on numbers. The R19 consultation is technical based mainly on process not content.
After that consultation the council might make some changes to the plan. It will then be further to subject approvals by both cabinet and full council before being submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for independent examination. Public hearings will be heard and we (the public) can make further representations. Ultimately the Planning Inspector will decide if the plan is sound and can be adopted. At that point the new Local Plan will be in place.
At this stage we simply don’t know when the above will take place. The council’s formal timetable, known as the Local Development Scheme (LDS), suggests that the plan will be submitted for examination by 30 June this year to meet the previous Government’s deadline, however, the new Government has extended that to 31 December 2026 so that new planning policy can be included. Basildon council has until the 12 March to decide if it wants to take extra time and amend the LDS timetable accordingly.
Once submitted for examination it can take months, if not years, to go through the independent review. Even if it is submitted by June this year it will likely to be late 2026, or later, before a plan is adopted. It’s not a fast process!
We are watching this carefully and will obviously provide an update soon as we have more news.
The BAG response to the public consultation can be found here
The consultation and the comments made can still be viewed here.
Basildon council will now start work on a final version of the Local Plan.
That plan will go to the council cabinet (a subset of the ruling administration) and full council (all 42 ward councillors) for agreement to move to the Regulation 19 public consultation stage. That is a democratic vote based simply on numbers. The R19 consultation is technical based mainly on process not content.
After that consultation the council might make some changes to the plan. It will then be further to subject approvals by both cabinet and full council before being submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for independent examination. Public hearings will be heard and we (the public) can make further representations. Ultimately the Planning Inspector will decide if the plan is sound and can be adopted. At that point the new Local Plan will be in place.
At this stage we simply don’t know when the above will take place. The council’s formal timetable, known as the Local Development Scheme (LDS), suggests that the plan will be submitted for examination by 30 June this year to meet the previous Government’s deadline, however, the new Government has extended that to 31 December 2026 so that new planning policy can be included. Basildon council has until the 12 March to decide if it wants to take extra time and amend the LDS timetable accordingly.
Once submitted for examination it can take months, if not years, to go through the independent review. Even if it is submitted by June this year it will likely to be late 2026, or later, before a plan is adopted. It’s not a fast process!
We are watching this carefully and will obviously provide an update soon as we have more news.
The BAG response to the public consultation can be found here
