Local Plan Review
We are reviewing our adopted Local Plan. We do this every five years to make sure we are planning for the future needs of our communities.
At the next meeting of the Chelmsford Policy Board on 6 November 2025, we will seek approval to run a focused consultation to add more sites to our Local Plan proposals.
We consulted on a full Pre-Submission Local Plan in February/March 2025, to meet our needs for development growth until 2041.
Since then, it has emerged that we need to add more land for homes and employment use into the plan to meet future needs. This is because some sites in the adopted Local Plan have not come forward and some sites will not be built as quickly as expected.
Added to this, the government has greatly increased its calculation of housing need in Chelmsford.
These two factors combined mean that we do not have enough allocated housing sites to meet these needs, especially for the first five years of the plan.
We are proposing to add 11 new housing sites and expand the proposed allocations for three housing sites and one employment site. We will also make focused changes to the relevant policies.
These additional sites would be located in settlements that:
- are accessible to the local highway network
- are near to services and facilities such as schools and local shops
- accord with the Plan’s Spatial Strategy
We have updated our Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) to consider the new sites and related policy changes. We are also seeking to publish the IIA for consultation.
You can read the agenda, a covering report, and the draft consultation documents for the Chelmsford Policy Board meeting on 6 November 2025.
However, the documents that go to Chelmsford Policy Board are not the final consultation documents. We cannot accept comments before the consultation opens later in November.
We have a specially designed consultation portal for Local Plan and other planning policy consultations.
If you register, you can:
- read and save consultation documents
- make your comments online
- receive alerts on future consultations
You can find out more about how to use the consultation portal.
Subject to agreement, we plan to run the consultation for seven weeks, from Thursday 20 November 2025 to Thursday 8 January 2026.
We will consult on two documents, which are the:
- Chelmsford Local Plan Focused Consultation – Additional Sites (Regulation 19) Document
- Integrated Impact Assessment: Focused Consultation Additional Sites (Regulation 19) Addendum
You cannot comment online or write to us until the consultation has begun, as we will not be able to consider your comments.
If you made comments to the last consultation in February/ March 2025, you do not need to submit them again.
When consultation closes, we will send all comments to the Planning Inspector. This includes all the comments from the focused consultation, as well as the comments from the last consultation in February/March 2025. We will also send the Inspector a summary of the main issues raised and publish it online.
We have published feedback reports from the earlier consultation stages:
- Issues and Options ‘You Said We Did’ Feedback Report (May 2024)
- Preferred Options ‘You Said We Did’ Feedback Report (February 2025)
- Pre-Submission Regulation 19 Document Feedback Report (July 2025)
- Pre-Submission Regulation 19 Integrated Impact Assessment Feedback Report (July 2025)
Topic papers
We have produced several Topic Papers to set out how the review of the Local Plan has been developed. We will refresh and update them at each stage of the review process to ensure the latest information/position is available.
Topic Papers provide background information, but they do not contain any policies, proposals or site allocations. They will form part of the Local Plan evidence base which we will submit alongside the Local Plan for independent examination.
You can still read the Pre-Submission stage consultation documents we published in Spring 2025, but you can no longer make comments on them.
These documents are large in size. You may find it easier to download and view these documents on a desktop computer, rather than on a smartphone or tablet.
We are developing a range of new and updated evidence to support the Local Plan review. We will publish the evidence base here as we develop it. You can search by name and/or category.
If you search by name or reference number, you can do this with or without choosing the category.
Alternatively, you can list all the documents in a category by choosing the category from the drop-down list and clicking on search.
We used several evidence base documents to support the adopted Local Plan. Many of these are still relevant or we will be updating them during the Local Plan review. Although they do not form part of this consultation, you can still view the evidence base for the Adopted Local Plan.
Delivering affordable homes for all
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- Delivering affordable homes for all
Delivering affordable homes for all
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- Delivering affordable homes for all
Delivering affordable homes for all
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- Delivering affordable homes for all
Delivering affordable homes for all
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- Delivering affordable homes for all
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
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- Increasing biodiversity and green spaces
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Addressing the climate change emergency
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- Addressing the climate change emergency
Other useful information
We adopted our current Local Plan in May 2020. It guides growth and development across Chelmsford City Council's area to 2036. We need to review the plan at least every five years, to see if we need to update it. The review means that the Local Plan will now run until 2041.
First stage: Issues and Options (completed)
This was the first stage of consultation, which took place in 2022. Many people and organisations commented, and we have carefully considered all the responses, alongside updated evidence, national planning policy, new local priorities, and monitoring data.
You can read an Issues and Options feedback report which sets out the consultation feedback we received on the Issues and Options consultation and how we have taken the comments into account when preparing the Preferred Options Local Plan.
Second stage: Preferred Options (completed)
This consultation was the second formal stage in the preparation of the review plan, and involved residents, businesses, developers, and other interested parties.
We have published a Preferred Options feedback report setting out a review of the consultation activity, a summary of the representations we received, and how these comments have been used to develop the Pre-Submission Local Plan document.
Third stage: Pre-Submission (in progress)
This consultation was the third formal stage in the preparation of the review plan. This consultation focused on legal compliance and consistency with national planning policy.
The consultation ran for a period of six weeks from 10am on Tuesday 4 February 2025 to 4pm on Tuesday 18 March 2025.
Final stage: Submission (still to come)
This is the formal Submission of the Local Plan. We will submit all plan documents, evidence, and comments to the Planning Inspector for an Independent Examination.
We recently consulted on two Neighbourhood Plans. These have been developed by Broomfield and Danbury Parish Councils and cover a wide range of issues such as landscape, transport, recreation, heritage, building design, and business.
Both the Danbury Neighbourhood Plan and the Broomfield Neighbourhood Plan have been made (adopted).
You can view the:
We will continue to assess the Local Plan as we review it, to make sure it contributes towards sustainability. We will assess the following aspects of sustainable development:
- Sustainability Appraisal
- Strategic Environmental Assessment
- Habitats Regulations Assessment
- Health Impact Assessment
- Equality Impact Assessment
The IIA assesses the issues and options against a range of social, environmental and economic indicators and helps to identify all the likely significant effects. The IIA advises on ways in which any adverse effects could be avoided, reduced or mitigated or how any positive effects could be maximised. This helps to ensure that the emerging policies, plans and allocations in the Local Plan are promoting sustainable development.
We use the Strategic Housing and Employment Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA) to assess sites nominated by landowners, promoters and developers. This helps us when researching and developing future Local Plans.
The SHELAA 2023/2024 is our latest published assessment. This assesses the sites put forward to us for consideration as part of the Local Plan Review. You can view the outcomes of that assessment.
The SHELAA is open all year round, meaning you can submit a new site or amend an existing site on a rolling basis. We aim to assess submissions yearly. We anticipate that the next cut-off point for submissions will be spring 2025.
You can submit a site for future assessment, or amend an already submitted site, through the current SHELAA facility.
You can find out more about how to submit or amend a site, and see the latest assessment outcomes.
We have a specially designed consultation portal for Local Plan and other planning policy consultations.
If you register, you can:
- read and save consultation documents
- make your comments online
- receive alerts on future consultations
You can find out more about how to use the consultation portal.
We use the Local Development Scheme (LDS) to manage the plan-making process. It sets out our timetable for preparing the documents and for consulting on the Local Plan review.
We first adopted an LDS in 2006 and we have reviewed it regularly as we have made progress on producing our Local Plan.
This LDS is the tenth review. You can download the Chelmsford Local Development Scheme 2025-2028.
You can also download the ninth review of the LDS, which we published in November 2023. You can view the changes we have made since November 2023 in Appendix 1 of the 2025-2028 LDS document.
We are committed to working with other councils and key organisations on planning issues that cross council boundaries.
The organisations we regularly work with include Essex County Council, National Highways, environmental organisations and education providers.
We have to ensure that we properly co-ordinate strategic issues such as:
- land for new homes and jobs
- infrastructure
- providing schools
- mitigating climate change
We have adopted a Duty to Co-operate Strategy, which sets out who we will co-operate with and when, plus how we will do it.
You can download the Duty to Co-operate Strategy.