30-month Local Plan Process: What the New System Means in Practice

The Government’s new 30-month local plan process is intended to do something the planning system has struggled with for years: get local plans produced more quickly, more consistently and with less procedural drift. The guidance says local planning authorities should prepare a single local plan and adopt it within 30 months, under the new plan-making system in England. 

On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, the key issue is not whether 30 months is a sensible ambition, but where the pressure now sits.

The structure of the new process is clear. Before the formal 30-month clock starts, authorities must complete a preparation stage that includes publishing a timetable, giving at least 4 months’ notice of plan-making, running a scoping consultation and passing Gateway 1. The guidance is explicit that this “getting ready” stage has no fixed overall duration, but it must be done properly if a plan is to have any realistic chance of being adopted on time. 

That matters because the headline 30 months is not really the whole story. The formal clock starts only once Gateway 1 has been passed. Before that, authorities are expected to have already done a substantial amount of groundwork: baseline evidence, environmental assessment preparation, early engagement, initial work on vision, land availability and supporting evidence. The guidance also says LPAs should start producing required plan content as early as possible and take a digital-first approach. 

What emerges is a system that tries to front-load plan-making. Instead of allowing authorities to spend years drifting through early evidence gathering and repeated consultation rounds, the new approach is designed to force earlier discipline. There are only a small number of mandatory consultation stages, and the guidance is quite clear that extra rounds should generally be avoided because they create delay. The consultation on proposed plan content and evidence must run for at least 6 weeks, and the later consultation on the proposed local plan must run for at least 8 weeks. 

The other important structural change is the use of three gateways. Gateway 1 is effectively a readiness test before the 30-month period starts. Gateway 2 brings in the Planning Inspectorate mid-process to give observations and advice on soundness and progress. Gateway 3 is the final check on whether the plan is ready to proceed to examination. Gateway 2 is expected to take 4 to 6 weeks, and Gateway 3 4 weeks, or up to 6 by exception. A plan cannot proceed to examination unless it successfully passes Gateway 3. 

That is significant because the risk is no longer just at examination. Under the old culture of plan-making, problems often accumulated quietly and then surfaced late. Under the new system, the intention is to expose those weaknesses earlier. In principle, that is sensible. For developers and promoters, earlier visibility on whether a plan is genuinely progressing could be helpful. For councils, though, it means that weak governance, incomplete evidence or unresolved cross-boundary issues are more likely to become visible sooner. 

The practical pressure points are easy to spot. Authorities are told to keep councillors and senior leaders engaged throughout, secure efficient sign-offs, and even consider changes to constitutions or standing orders if needed to avoid delay. They are also expected to maintain proactive engagement with key stakeholders and prepare statements of common ground where cross-boundary matters arise. If that engagement fails, the guidance says a “requirement to assist” is intended to be available as a last resort. 

For landowners and developers, the commercial implication is straightforward: the window for influencing plan strategy may narrow if authorities follow this process properly. By the time a preferred strategy is emerging, councils are supposed to have already gathered baseline material, tested options, progressed site selection and assembled a meaningful body of evidence. In other words, the most effective interventions may need to happen earlier, during the preparation and evidence stages, not just at the headline consultation points. 

The question is not whether a 30-month plan process is desirable. In principle, it is. The real question is whether authorities have the governance, evidence base, political alignment and resourcing to make it work without simply relocating delay into the pre-start stage or into Gateway 3 failures. The guidance provides a clearer route map than the system has had before. But speed will still depend on capability. 

For anyone promoting land, monitoring local plan progress or advising on strategy, that is the point to watch. A shorter formal process does not remove planning risk. It just concentrates it earlier.