What a Local Plan allocation means for land near you

Each council's development plan is made up of its local plan, any spatial development strategy for the wider area, a minerals and waste plan and a policies map, and can include neighbourhood plans ². The law puts it first: applications must be decided in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise, and national policy, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), is one such consideration ¹.

A local plan sets a vision, a spatial strategy, minimum figures for how much development is needed, and the sites allocated or designated to deliver it, looking at least 10 years ahead from adoption ². The policies map shows the boundary of every allocation and designation ².

An allocation is a site the plan identifies for a specific use. Each one must give a site reference, its area, the use, an indicative capacity (for housing, roughly how many homes) and when it is expected to be delivered ².

• Outside towns and villages, building on land allocated for that purpose is one of the kinds of development national policy expects to be approved ³.
• Land that is allocated, or has permission, and will become built-up counts as part of the settlement it adjoins ⁴. A field next to an allocation is therefore next to the town's future edge.
• Inside a settlement, a proposal that would harm an allocation is a reason to refuse it ³.

A draft (emerging) plan carries weight according to three things: how far it has got, how serious the unresolved objections to it are, and how closely it follows national policy ⁵. An early draft counts for little; a plan that has passed examination counts for a lot.

Refusing an application because it would pre-empt the plan, called prematurity, needs both a very large scheme and a plan at an advanced stage. A plan is unlikely to be advanced before it has been submitted for examination ⁵.

New rules for making plans came into force on 25 March 2026 ⁶. Plans should be prepared and adopted within 30 months of the council publishing its first gateway self-assessment ^2,7. The main steps are ⁷:

Councils can still finish plans under the old system if they submit them by 31 December 2026 ⁸, so some old-style plans will be adopted in 2027.

Work on the next plan must start no later than five years after a plan is adopted ². An older plan does not stop counting, but two things weaken it:

• Policies that are materially inconsistent with the national decision-making policies introduced in August 2026 get very limited weight, unless the plan was examined against the 2026 Framework. Policies that are consistent keep their weight ⁹.
• Once a plan's housing requirement is more than five years old, the council's five-year housing land supply is measured against the government's standard method figure instead ¹⁰.

See our guide to five-year housing land supply for what happens when a council falls short.

Look on the council's planning policy or local plan pages for the adopted plan, its interactive policies map and its timetable for the next plan. Councils must keep their timetable up to date ⁶. Every council page on Check That Field links to the plan we hold for it: find your council.