Stage 4: Confirming your draft allocations and recording your decisions
Draft guidance for confirming the draft allocations you wish to take forward into your proposed local plan.
Applies to England
We have published this guidance now so that LPAs can see the direction of travel for the new plan making system. We will review the guidance and make any necessary revisions and updates as the new system is implemented, and related regulations and policy are confirmed.
For plans under the legacy plan-making system
If you are submitting your plan under the legacy system, use the create or update a local plan legacy system guidance.
The legacy system covers plans to be adopted under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, excluding the amendments made by the LURA, and The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012.
This is where you confirm the sites to take forward as your draft site allocations for your plan. They should be sites that meet your needs and align with your spatial strategy and proposed plan vision based on the judgements you’ve made throughout the process.
It is recommended that you follow the process for both housing and employment sites at the same time.
Aim of this section
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confirm the draft allocations for your plan
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learn how to best record your decision making
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understand the outputs you need by the end of the process
Outputs of this section
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a list of draft allocations to include in your plan
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a list of sites you have rejected
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your rationale for each selected and rejected site, and the evidence to support your decisions
Outputs at the end of confirming your draft allocations
It’s essential to include clear rationale about the decisions you make throughout your site selection process. It gives communities and stakeholders clarity on how you arrived at your draft allocations. It also gives Inspectors a clear indication of your evidence base. It’s easier to report on these decisions if you’ve documented them effectively.
Your evidence base will be most effective where it is clearly presented, easy to understand and accessible to a wide audience. Showing and documenting your reasoning for the decisions you have made will increase the likelihood your local plan will be considered sound at examination, against the tests of soundness set out in national policy. You can use your emerging evidence on sites to inform gateway assessments and public consultation.
You need to report on:
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sites you have proposed as draft allocations for your local plan
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sites you have not selected
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your justification for each site
At examination, inspectors will look for a clear explanation of how you have arrived at your draft allocations. It’s important to include the scores you gave for all the sites you have considered throughout the assessment.
Your evidence should clearly explain the decisions you have made on each site, in particular, why each site is or is not proposed for allocation in your plan.
You can read more about formatting your site selections below.
Describing your methodology
It’s essential you explain the methodology you decided to use when it comes to the examination. This is key to rationalising your decisions on specific sites.
You should detail your approach, including:
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an overview of the methodology you used, including how you assessed and scored sites
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how you applied this to different site types and categories
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how it allowed you to arrive at the right outcome
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where you have departed from this guidance, and the reasons for doing so
You should specifically reference why your methodology was most appropriate for your local context.
Formatting your site decisions
You should set out your decisions and rationale in a summary table.
For each site your rationale should be clear but succinct, with any specific considerations for each site made clear. Include appropriate cross-references to any detailed documentation from your assessments at Stages 2 and 3.
You may be working from, and producing, several documents when assessing your sites in Stages 2 and 3. At examination, Inspectors will want to follow a clear narrative on each site across these documents. An appropriately referenced summary table helps make this possible.
The following detail also helps to assess whether your site selection process is justified for your plan:
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site name or reference
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site location (cross referenced to maps of sites)
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site category
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how much you can build on each site
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the time it will take to build out each site, including details on phasing larger sites where appropriate
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individual RAG scores for suitability, availability and achievability
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overall RAG score
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justifications for overall score, including detail on any changes between Stages 2 and 3
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for housing sites, if a site has been determined to be ‘deliverable’ or developable’
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indication or ordering of the sites to show which ones you have deemed unsuitable, and which ones are your draft allocations.
Using this standardised approach allows Inspectors and other examination participants to extract information quickly without the need for excessive detail. It is also quick and easy to format and edit if needed.
Read more about how to effectively format your decisions for examination.
Next steps
By finishing this section, you’ve completed all the work needed for identifying, assessing and selecting your draft allocations.
Your selected allocations will form part of your proposed local plan, which will be consulted on and scrutinised at examination.
As a result of representations made through consultation you may need to make changes to the sites you have chosen in your proposed local plan. If so, you may need to revisit or repeat parts of the site selection process to identify additional or different sites to include as draft allocations in your proposed local plan.