Council to discuss next steps this week after minister demanded it update 27-year-old plan
Basildon Borough Council is set to continue to challenge the government’s efforts to force it to update its 27-year-old local plan with significantly more housing.
In July this year, the housing minister wrote to the council, directing it to consult on and submit a new development plan that “meets the housing need in full” by 31 December 2026, with the authority “at least five months behind schedule” to submit an up-to-date framework.
Matthew Pennycook’s letter gave 10 August as a deadline to commence Regulation 19 consultation, the final stage for communities to comment on a plan before it is submitted to government.
He asked the council to inform the government of any “exceptional circumstances” that suggest intervention is not appropriate by 4 August.
With these deadlines now passed, the council is set to meet this Thursday to debate the plan and submit its formal advisory comments and observations to the secretary of state and appointed planning inspector “as part of the ongoing plan making process”.
A document laying out the motions for the authority’s next meeting indicate that it will continue to negotiate with the government rather than publish or endorse the imposed local plan.
It highlighted the council’s “disappointment that local democratic decision-making has been overridden, preventing elected councillors from determining the timing and content of a local plan that will have a profound impact on the future of the borough.”
Basildon’s leader is also expected to request that the council’s objections are given “full and proper weight throughout the remainder of the local plan process, including the examination in public”.
At a meeting in July, days after Pennycook’s letter, the authority refused to endorse a Regulation 19 draft local plan for 27,918 new homes, which would triple the housing target in the village of Ramsden Bellhouse to 120-140 “without explanation”. In 2025, the council’s housing target for the village was “around 39 dwellings”.
Andrew Schrader, cabinet member for planning at conservative-led Basildon Council, said at this meeting that he would “not lift a finger to endorse or in any way promote this plan”.
He described the document as “substantially Labour’s plan”, inherited from the previous administration and urged residents to object to the plan during consultation, which closes on 22 September. “I hope that everyone will engage constructively with that process and make the strongest possible representations and the strongest possible case that this plan is not sound,” he added.
Andy Barnes, council leader, said: “At the moment, we’ve lost local decision-making on the local plan… it’s a betrayal of our residents.”
In his original letter from 21 July, Pennycook reminded the council that the government was elected on a manifesto commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes this parliament, adding that “all areas are required to play their part.”
The borough’s existing local plan was adopted in 1998, with minor alterations the following year. Pennycook noted the policies are now “likely to be significantly out of date” and that Basildon is one of only five authorities without a plan adopted under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and the only one in that group yet to submit its emerging plan for examination.
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