We have submitted the Local Plan for Independent Examination. You can find out more about the Local Plan Examination.
Local Plan Review
We are reviewing our current Local Plan, which we adopted 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.
We submitted the Local Plan for Independent Examination by a government-appointed Planning Inspector on 5 June 2026. You can find out about the Local Plan Examination.
The Independent Examination is led by an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State. They will decide whether the Plan meets legal and procedural requirements, and recommend whether we can adopt it.
We carried out four stages of consultation throughout the review of the Local Plan. We have published a statement containing a summary of the comments received and a high-level response from the Council to the matters raised. This Regulation 22 Statement also sets out who we consulted, for example the statutory bodies, local stakeholders, developers and their agents, local businesses, voluntary and community groups and the wider public, and the engagement methods we used.
We have acknowledged receipt of all ‘duly made’ representations to the consultation documents, but we will not enter into individual correspondence. We have recorded and published all comments on ourConsultation Portal.
We have sent all comments to the Planning Inspector. This includes all the comments from this focused consultation, as well as the comments from the last consultation in February/March 2025. We have also sent the Inspector a summary of the main issues raised and published it online.
You can find out more about the Local Plan Examination.
You can still read the Pre-Submission and Additional Sites stage consultation documents, 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.
Pre-Submission Local Plan Consultation Document
Pre-Submission Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA)
Focused Consultation Additional Sites (Regulation 19) Document
Integrated Impact Assessment: Focused Consultation Additional Sites (Regulation 19) Addendum
We have developed a range of new and updated evidence to support the Local Plan review. You can view and search our evidence base.
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. 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.
The consultation ran for ten weeks from 11 August until 20 October 2022.
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.
The consultation ran for six weeks from 8 May to 19 June 2024.
Third stage: Pre-Submission (completed)
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 six weeks from 4 February 2025 to 18 March 2025.
Fourth stage: Focused Consultation Additional Sites (completed)
This consultation focused on additional and expanded housing and employment sites.
The consultation ran for seven weeks, from 20 November 2025 to 8 January 2026.
Final stage: Submission (current stage)
This is the formal Submission of the Local Plan. We have submitted all plan documents, evidence, and comments to the Planning Inspector for an Independent Examination.
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.
The SHELAA is open all year round, meaning you can submit a new site or amend an existing site on a rolling basis. We have aligned the assessment periods with the Local Plan Review Stages.
You can find out more about how to submit or amend a site and see the latest assessment outcomes via our Call for sites, SHELAA and Parish Maps page.
The SHELAA assessment reports do not allocate sites for development . However, they do provide information that we use alongside other evidence base documents in the Local Plan Review.
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.