Local Plan

The Three Rivers Local Plan was adopted in 2002. It includes a range of planning policies used for making decisions on planning applications. Following the Direction from the Secretary of State in 2007 and the adoption of the Core Strategy Development Plan Document on the 17 October 2011 (see section on saved policies below); a number of Local Plan policies can no longer be used in the determination of planning applications. (Please refer to the Development Plan page).

The original Local Plan which includes the proposal maps can be viewed below together with a word version where policies have been annotated where they have expired or been replaced by the policies within the Core Strategy.

The Council currently apply a moratorium on development with a net gain of 10 or more dwellings. Further information is available from the Planning Policy section at the address below.

Saved Policies

As part of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, local plan policies were protected for a period of three years from commencement of the Act. In order to extend or 'save' policies, we obtained a Direction from the Secretary of State.  This can be downloaded below along with the accompanying letter from the Secretary of State:

The effect of the Direction was that the majority of policies are ‘saved’ until they can be replaced by policies in a Development Plan Document. Twelve policies were deleted because they were considered to be out of date, no longer relevant or covered by other national or regional planning policies.

Following the adoption of the Core Strategy Development Plan Document on 17 October 2011 a further 25 Local Plan policies have now been replaced and can no longer be used in the determination of planning applications. Details of the policies that have been replaced can be viewed in Appendix 1 of the Core Strategy

Supplementary Planning Guidance reflects the policies of the Local Plan and do not introduce new policy but may help to give guidelines on how the Council takes account of some detailed considerations in Planning.

The Local Plan is due to be replaced by the Three Rivers Local Development Framework.