How we have prepared to meet the 30 month timeframe to produce a Local Plan.
Westmorland and Furness Council Local Plan Gateway 1 Readiness Checker (PDF, 184KB)
We formally started preparing a new local plan for the planning authority area of Westmorland and Furness District on 30 October 2026. We gave notice of our intention to commence the preparation of our new local plan and published our local plan timetable on 30 June 2026. We carried out our Scoping Consultation and a Call for Sites between 1 July and 11 August 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.
The start of our 30 month plan officially starts on the date that we publish our Gateway 1 self-assessment: 30 October 2026.
More information is available on the Local Plan webpage
The 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.
The Government have 3 mandatory ‘Gateways’ to support plan preparation. Our timetable shows how we intend to progress through these Gateways and how the Gateways will help support our plan preparation.
As well as the Gateways, there are three mandatory consultation events throughout plan-making. We carried out an ‘Early Conversation’ consultation in 2024. This early engagement helped to inform our thinking. The views from this consultation have been carried forward into our plans for the additional three consultation events.
We held our Scoping Consultation in Summer 2026. This is classed as the first official consultation of the 30 month plan-making process. We intend to hold our second consultation in September 2027, which is just over a third of the way through our plan-making. We will hold the third and final consultation event in June 2028, when we will consult on our draft Local Plan.
The timetable shows our ambitious plan to progress our Local Plan at pace. We have already carried out our Scoping Consultation. Once we have passed through Gateway 1, we will continue to gather evidence. This consultation will enable us to get feedback and views from stakeholders to inform plan-making. We will then work to develop our plan and pass through Gateway 2 in June 2028. In October 2028 we will look to complete Gateway 3, which is a stop/go gateway prior to examination. We aim to adopt our new Local Plan in April 2029.
We recognise that some parts of this plan-making process are outside of our control. However, we believe our timetable is achievable and realistic. We have already carried out work to help support the timetable, including gathering of evidence and engagement with stakeholders:
We have developed our project management and governance arrangements in advance of Gateway 1 to support our 30 month plan making timetable. More information can be viewed in the Westmorland and Furness Local Plan Project Initiation Document (PDF , 1.2MB)
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.
The preparation of a Local Plan involves officers from across the Council, Members and stakeholders from other organisations. It is a complex process, which needs careful preparation.
We are in the process of reviewing our constitution to bring it in line with the governance processes proposed in our Project Initiation Document. This will ensure that decision making is taken at the correct level to support our Local Plan preparation.
Public consultation is essential for the local plan to represent the needs of our communities. It must be easy 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.
We have used the views obtained from our Early Conversation and from the Scoping Consultation to inform our Draft Engagement Strategy. As part of the Scoping Consultation, we structured questions around six key themes and asked for comments on the evidence base to support the Local Plan. We also asked respondents how they would like to be consulted in future.
Work continues to analyse the feedback received and a summary report will be shared in due course.
The Engagement Strategy details our approach to engagement and consultation, how and when we will engage, who we will engage with and the tools we will use to engage with them throughout the plan-making process.
Draft Consultation & Engagement Strategy (PDF , 468KB)
Scoping includes considering how well the existing plan is 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.
We have started to review our four current local plans (Barrow Borough, Eden, South Lakeland and the Cumbria Minerals and Waste Local Plan) to see how well they have served our local communities.
To gain an understanding of the development needs for our area we carried out a Strategic Housing and Economic Needs Assessment. This provides an assessment of housing and employment land need to inform targets in the Local Plan. It also provides an assessment of affordable housing need and housing needs of a range of different groups. We will use this work to inform housing and employment policies.
We have also completed a number of baseline evidence studies that will help inform the Local Plan. These include a Level 1 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment, a Waste Needs Assessment an updated Landscape Character Assessment, a Playing Pitch and Outdoor Sports Strategy and a Transport baseline report. Evidence studies can be viewed on the Evidence Base.
We also undertook a significant amount of baseline information gathering for our Integrated Impact Assessment Scoping Report.
We have built on what we learned from our Early Conversation consultation to inform our early thinking on the vision for our new plan. We have proposed broad themes for our plan which we used during our Scoping Consultation.
We will use our findings to date to develop the vision for our local plan, and help identify the measurable outcomes which the new local plan will look to address.
We are legally required to identify, describe and evaluate likely significant effects on the environment of;
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 commenced a Strategic Environmental Assessment in early 2024 by commissioning consultants to undertake a Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report. Subsequently we decided to expand the scope into an Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) which will include:
This will enable us to take a more holistic approach to assessing the effects of the Local Plan on our environment and people.
We prepared an Integrated Impact Assessment Scoping Report and published this alongside our Scoping Consultation in July 2026. The report will be updated throughout the course of the Local Plan. We consulted statutory consultees during this period and are reviewing feedback which we will use to refine the scoping framework and plan the next stages of assessment in relation to sites and policy options.
Sign up to our Planning Policy consultation database to receive email updates about any future consultations on our Local Plan and other planning policy documents.
Visit the Local Plan webpage to keep up to date on the progress of the Local Plan.