By the time the notice goes up, it's decided
How the planning system actually works, and the stage where speaking up counts most.
Most of us first notice the planning system when a notice appears on a lamppost. By then a lot of it was settled years before. Roughly, it goes like this.
- The government gives each council a starting figure for new homes.
- Every few years the council writes a local plan that picks the sites. It asks the public twice, once on the options and once on the finished draft. The options stage is when things can still move.
- Then come the applications. If a site is in the adopted plan, whether it gets built on was decided back then. If the plan is out of date, developers can win on fields that were never in it.
Above the district councils, county leaders and the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough talk to government about growth across whole areas. It's one of the few places you can push for a planned approach instead of a scatter.
Sign the petition and we'll email you when your district's next plan opens, with a plain guide to responding.
Where you live
We can stop this
We want building concentrated in fewer, larger places with schools, health, water and transport built in — not another estate on the edge of every village.
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