The Government's Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, which commenced in September 2004, has introduced major changes to the planning system. Structure Plans and Local Plans will gradually be phased out and will eventually be replaced by Local Development Frameworks (LDF), essentially a folder of new planning policy documents called Local Development Documents as well as other supporting documentation.
When the Act commenced, considerable progress had already been made on the Replacement St Edmundsbury Borough Local Plan 2016 and so the council continued its preparation through to adoption in accordance with the transitional arrangements of the Act before starting detailed work on the new LDF.
As part of the new planning system, the council must prepare and maintain a development scheme (LDS). This is essentially a project management plan which sets out the Council's programme for the preparation of the new Local Development Documents. A Local Development Scheme is only required to look forward three years.
The LDS sets out the documents that St Edmundsbury Borough Council will produce as part of the new planning policy framework that the Act introduces. It also sets out a timetable for the preparation and on-going review of the documents.
The LDS was first approved by the council in June 2005. This was reviewed in February 2006, March 2007,November 2007, April 2009 and March 2011 (PDF 441Kb). Since the production of the March 2011 LDS, changes to the Regional Government structure mean that revisions to the timeline no longer need to be submitted to the East of England Government Office.
Future revisions to the timeline will be made available here as a 'live' timeline to ensure that members of the public and other interested parties have the most up to information available. The current Local Development Scheme timeline (PDF 83Kb) was published in October 2011
