A New Dawn for Local Plans: 30-Month Local Plan Regulations published

It is only Wednesday, and yet it has already been a busy week for LURA enabling legislation!

On 2nd March two sets of commencement regulations were laid before parliament:

• The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) (No. 3) (England) Regulations 2026; and
• The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (Commencement No. 11 and Saving and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026

I am not going to spend much time on the first set of regulations, which come into effect on 14 April 2026. These tweak the planning powers and functions of two specific Development Corporations (Ebbsfleet and Old Oak and Park) and are therefore likely to be of interest to a comparatively small number of readers. For those of you who are interested, the full text of the legislation can be found here.

The second set of regulations, however, are a big deal. As these bring into effect the LURA 30-Month Local Plan System.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (Commencement No. 11 and Saving and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026, can be divided into three main sections or groups:

• Provisions coming into force on 3rd March 2026
• Provisions coming into force on 25th March 2026
• Plan making saving and transitional provisions

and this is how I am going to discuss them in this blog.

Now, a few spoilers before we get stuck in. The Local Plan Regulations do not bring the following into effect:

• s.110 – Material variations in planning permission. This is the section which would introduce s.73B into the TCPA 1990
• The provisions in Schedule 7 relating to joint spatial development strategies – which will largely be replaced by the strategic planning provisions in the Planning & Infrastructure Act and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
• The provisions in schedule 7 relating to neighbourhood priorities statements

Now that we have looked at what isn’t happening, lets take a closer look at what is….

Provisions coming into force on 3rd March 2026

The first thing to make abundantly clear, is that the following provisions only came into effect for the purposes of allowing the Secretary of State to make further regulations.

Right, now that health warning is out of the way, the following parts of LURA came into effect, for regulation-making purposes, on 3 March 2026:

• section 97 (plan making)
• Schedule 7 (plan making), excluding sections 15A to 15AI, 15K and 15LE(2)(a), (b), (c), (k), (l) and (3) of the PCPA 2004, inserted by that Schedule;
• section 100 (requirement to assist with certain plan making).

The exclusions in schedule 7 largely relate to spatial development strategy provisions, and neighbourhood priorities statements.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that these provisions came into effect yesterday, which might be an indication that some of those further regulations will start to appear (at least in draft) pretty darn quickly. If I were a betting woman, I might be inclined to wager that some of them might arrive before March 25th….

Provisions coming into force on 25th March 2026

The substantive local plan provisions come into effect on 25 March 2026, in particular;

• section 92 (development plans: content);
• section 97 (plan-making) and;
• the vast majority of Schedule 7 – although again do note the exclusions for spatial development strategies
• section 98 (contents of a neighbourhood development plan);
• section 99 (neighbourhood development plans and orders: basic conditions);
• section 100 (requirement to assist with certain plan making) in so far as it is not already in force, except “or Part 2 of this Act” in inserted section 39A(5)(b) of the PCPA 2004;
• section 101 (minor and consequential amendments in connection with Chapter 2) in so far as it relates to specified provisions in Schedule 8

Which means that from 25 March 2026, the duty to co-operate (which is currently located in s.33A of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004) will have formally been revoked and replaced with the new “LURA-style” local plan system.

Plan making saving and transitional provisions

The detailed transitional provisions for plan-making are set out in Schedule 1 to the Regulations.

These are quite complicated, but are summarised in the explanatory notes as follows:

• local planning development plan documents which have effect as part of the development plan before the 25 March 2026 continue to have effect as part of the development plan until a new local plan is adopted.
• development plan documents containing provision relating to minerals and waste continue to have effect until such time as the Secretary of State directs that the saving for these documents no longer has effect.
• A saving is provided for a regional strategy where it has effect as part of the development plan, until a new local plan is adopted for the area.
• There is also a saving for supplementary planning documents until such time as the development plan document to which the supplementary planning document relates no longer has effect. No further supplementary planning documents can be adopted after 30th June 2026.
• The last date for submitting a development plan document for examination under Part 2 of the PCPA 2004, as saved, is 31st December 2026, although the Secretary of State has discretion to direct a later date.
• Schedule 1 also provides that some of the minor and consequential amendments in relation to the coming into force of the new plan making system, made by Schedule 8 to the Act, do not apply for the purposes of an authority preparing a local development document under Part 2 of the PCPA 2004 as saved.

As stated above, however, the savings provisions do not extend to the duty to cooperate, however, which is clearly intended to go the way of the Dodo come March 25th.

So there we have it. A brave new world of local plan-making dawns on March 25th….by which point, I think we can expect a few more shiny new sets of secondary legislation to have appeared on the horizon!