Local Plan - what's next?

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Local Plan consultation.

It was the city's biggest ever consultation, with thousands of responses. Last week we spoke to the council officer running the process.

As a reminder, here's our guide to the Local Plan consultation which closed earlier in September.

As it is such a huge, city wide consultation - requiring lots of expertise - it will take quite some time to get to the next stage - spring 2026. But then again, this is the plan for how we use land up until the 2040s!

In short, they need to use your contributions to assess both the overall strategy and the long list of sites being considered. There will then be a new site assessment for each site. Those sites will be re-scored, and they will consider in more detail the infrastructure needed to support different strategy options and sites.

Following this, a new draft Local Plan will be created.

We've asked for sites that are obviously unsuitable to be dropped sooner than the full new draft is published, along with a full explanation of the assessment used for this. We'll update you and share widely the results of each local site either way.

Additionally, you may have seen that the government has backed our plan for regenerating 'Leeds South Bank'. There are 13,000 homes projected for the area from Holbeck to Leeds Dock, along with significant commercial development with matching health, transport and other amenities. You can read more here. This and other major existing brownfield development plans will make up the vast majority of house building targets for Leeds.