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How we got ready to prepare a new local plan 

We started preparing a new local plan for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole on 30 October 2026. 

Government policy says we should adopt the new plan within 30 months of this date. This is to help ensure we have an up-to-date local plan that responds to the needs of the area and our communities. 

This page explains what we did to get ready to meet the 30-month timeframe. It also has links to further information and where you can get updates. 

We published a timetable for preparing the plan

The Local Plan timetable shows when we expect to carry out the different stages and activities for preparing a plan. It helps us check if and how we can adopt the plan within the 30-month timeframe. We’ll keep this updated as we make more progress. 

To ensure we deliver our plan within 30 months, we:

• have proactively engaged with stakeholders and community groups, both informally before publishing our notice of intention to commence and as part of our scoping consultation
• will promote the use of a digital response form to help us analyse the responses more efficiently

Engaging in this way has helped generate initial ideas and key criteria within the plan. It also ensured that stakeholders and residents had sight of the plan-making process and the requirements for the new plan-making system early on. We will continue to work with these groups through our consultation periods. 

We’re confident we will be able to adopt our plan within 30 months. 

We established project management and governance arrangements

Preparing a local plan is a complex process. It involves many people across the council and from other organisations. Thinking early about how the work is planned, managed and signed off helps us monitor our progress and keep the work on track. It also helps us anticipate and manage any risks to us adopting the plan within 30 months. 

We've developed a project plan to help us prepare the plan in line with our local plan timetable and will meet regularly with our key decision makers to monitor how this is going. When we developed the project plan we identified some risks to its delivery. We have reflected on these risks and identified things we can do to reduce these risks.

Guidance advises us to:

• consider our governance procedures
• ensure we have efficient sign off processes in place with key decisions makers

We used a project initiation document to help us do this. This is a template provided by the Planning Advisory Service that helps us consider the factors that we need to in advance.

The Local Plan will be subject to a formal project management and operational structure.

Day to day work on procuring and collecting evidence and developing the Local Plan will be undertaken by the planning policy team, overseen by the project manager.

Full Council will have the formal decision making role to:

• consider and approve the draft plan for consultation and subsequent submission 
• approve the final adoption of the Local Plan

The Cabinet has the formal decision-making role to:

• approve the issue of the notice to start plan making and the project initiation document (PID)
• agree delegated authority to the Director of Planning and Transport and the Leader of the Council to update the timetable and submission of gateway assessments 
• approve the scoping consultation 
• approve consultation on plan content and evidence gathering stage 
• recommend to council that the draft plan is put out for consultation and subsequent submission for examination
• approve for consultation any subsequent and significant main modifications arising from the examination process
• recommend to council that the final version of the Local Plan is adopted

The council’s Overview & Scrutiny Board will review the Local Plan and recommending improvements to Cabinet before decisions are made. The Board will make recommendations to Cabinet, specifically on: 

• the timetable, PID and scoping stage 
• the proposed vision, strategy and any draft policies proposed in the plan content and evidence consultation
• the draft plan prior to consultation

A cross-party Local Plan working group will interrogate and discuss the evidence emerging and how this informs the spatial and policy implications for the BCP Local Plan. The group will provide a consultative (but not decision-making) role to support plan making. 

We planned how we’ll consult on the plan

Public consultation is essential for the local plan to represent the needs of our communities. It must be clear and straightforward for people to have their say in a way that works for them, so they can influence the way the area develops. By planning this early, we can ensure people are aware in advance and can get involved from the start. 

We have undertaken a scoping consultation to get people’s views on what the plan could contain and how we propose to consult on the plan at key stages.

Respondents to the scoping consultation (also discussed further below) wanted a broader and more inclusive engagement strategy that does not depend mainly on digital channels or self-selecting participation. Questions were also raised around trust in the consultation process and whether views will be genuinely taken into account. 

Find out more about how we will consult and engage on the Local Plan.

We began scoping the content of the plan and the supporting evidence that we will need

Scoping includes considering how well the three existing plans for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole respectively are working and gathering baseline information about the area. This helps to identify our future needs and ambitions. Starting this early means we can begin preparing the new plan with a clear vision, making it quicker and easier to consult on the plan and make decisions about it. 

To gain an understanding of the development needs for our area, we have looked at the existing evidence about our area and the people our plan needs to provide for. 

Using the information we have gathered along with the input from our decision makers, we have: 

• drafted a vision for the area
• gained an initial understanding of the development requirements for our area 
• begun to commission or (where working with neighbours) contribute to supporting evidence studies, we have already commissioned or have other work in the pipeline on assessments of and of economic viability; education needs; employment needs; flood risk; the Green Belt; gypsy and traveller accommodation requirements; housing need; land availability for development and other uses of land such as green spaces; protected habitats; retail and leisure; strategic environmental assessment; brownfield sites; sports facilities; and transport

Finally, we have started looking at what new planning policies we’d need for decision making about new developments. In doing so we have considered the 2026 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and specifically policy PM6(1c) which instructs plan-makers not to include local policies in their development plans that duplicate, substantively restate, or are inconsistent with the seventy-nine National Decision-Making Policies (NDMPs). 

We’ve shared some of this with the public through the scoping consultation and published summaries on our website. Key themes of the public response to the scoping consultation were that:

• the existing key issues are too broad and not sufficiently specific.
• more explicit protection and restoration of Christchurch Harbour and connected waterways needed 
• greater emphasis and priority needed for tackling flood risk, drainage and water infrastructure
• infrastructure needed to support growth including healthcare, education and recreation
• greater clarity needed on housing delivery, housing types, location and land strategy
• Green Belt - a clear tension between respondents who want stronger Green Belt protection and those who argue the Plan must explicitly allow Green Belt release to meet housing need 
• stronger recognition needed for nature recovery and biodiversity
• a clearer strategic vision for regeneration, safety and place quality

The full report of the scoping consultation findings will be published on our website in November 2026.

We began a Strategic Environmental Assessment 

We’re legally required to identify, describe and evaluate likely significant effects on the environment of:

• implementing the local plan
• reasonable alternatives, taking into account the plan’s objectives and scope

This process will consider how community, national and international environmental protection objectives and any other environmental challenges are taken into account in the plan. It will help us to predict significant environmental effects and develop ways of preventing, reducing and offsetting these.

It is important we start this work early and are transparent about how we’re doing the assessment when engaging stakeholders and communities.

We’ve prepared a draft scoping report and have consulted on it with relevant statutory bodies (Environment Agency, Historic England and Natural England). We’ve also developed a series of alternative scenarios to form the basis of the assessment, and will ask for views on these in the forthcoming Content and Evidence consultation. Later this year we will also begin preparing the SEA report required by the relevant regulations.

How to stay up to date

For updates about when you can have your say on the new Local Plan and other planning documents, please sign up for notifications by adding your contact details to our mailing list.

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