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You are here: Home > Business and planning > Planning > Planning policies > The Local Plan > Policy Status Update

Policy Status Update

This section is intended to provide updated information about the status of planning policies.

Saved and Non Saved Policies

The Borough Local Plan 2005 is formed from the First Alteration adopted on 7 April 2005, combined with the unaltered parts of the 1994 Borough Local Plan adopted on 21 July 1994. When the Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 came into force into September 2004, policies in the Local Plan were saved for three years from either the date of the Act or from the date of their adoption. As the Council's Local Plan comprises the 1994 Plan and the First Alteration, policies from the 1994 Plan were saved until September 2007 and policies from the First Alteration could be saved until April 2008.

The three year period was intended to allow local authorities to develop their new style planning policy documents, starting with the Core Strategy. However, in practice the new system has not progressed as quickly as it had been hoped, and the Borough Council applied to the Government to have most of our policies retained until they are replaced under the new Local Development Framework system.

The Government Office for the South East (GOSE), on behalf of the Secretary of State, has now responded to this request and issued a direction stating which Local Plan policies will be retained and used in determining planning applications, and those that are no longer retained. This should be read in conjunction with the Borough Local Plan.

•  Letter from GOSE incorporating the schedule of saved policies (1.80MB)

139 policies were saved out of a total of 149.  In general, policies that were not saved were considered to be merely repeating national or regional policy, or were out of date. Those policies not saved expired on 27 September 2007, with the exception of Policy Ho 3A from the Alteration which will expire in April 2008. A separate list of those policies which have not been saved has been compiled by the Council for convenience.

•  Schedule of policies which have not been saved (95.9kB)

The same process has also occurred with policies from the Surrey Structure Plan.

•  Read about saved Structure Plan policies on Surrey County Council's website