Emerging Local Plan

It is important to undertake regular reviews of the local plan as circumstances change and some planning policies may become out of date. Broadland District and South Norfolk Councils, working with Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council, have recently completed a major review of their planning policies with the Greater Norwich Local Plan (GNLP) being adopted by both Councils in March 2024. The GNLP plans for the housing and job needs of the area to 2038 and builds on the long-established joint working arrangement for Greater Norwich. It includes strategic policies to guide future development and plans to protect the environment. It looks to ensure that delivery of development is done in a way which promotes sustainability and the effective functioning of the whole area. You can find out more about the GNLP on their website.

As well as strategic policies the GNLP also allocates land for development. Although the GNLP covers the Greater Norwich area as a whole it still takes into account the unique requirements of the individual partners and recognises that South Norfolk is the most rural of the authorities. To reflect its rural nature a separate South Norfolk Village Clusters Housing Site Allocations document is currently being developed by South Norfolk Council to find suitable sites for housing in its smaller villages.

Alongside the plans themselves, there are several documents we must prepare as part of the Local Plan process. These documents monitor the development of planning policy and the delivery of the Local Plan:

Local Development Scheme

Local planning authorities must set out a timetable for their review in a document called the Local Development Scheme (LDS). The LDS also specifies what documents, when prepared, will comprise the Local Plan for the area.

Read our Local Development Scheme documents.

Authority Monitoring Reports

These documents provide information relating to the performance of policies within each Local Plan document. Read more about the Authority Monitoring Reports for Broadland and South Norfolk.