Winchester's Local Plan 2044 scoping consultation runs to 23:59 on 9 October. Nine days before it opened, the council asked the government to let it delay.
Winchester City Council opened consultation on its next Local Plan on Friday 18 September. You have until 23:59 on Friday 9 October to respond.
Nine days before it opened, the council asked the government to let it put the whole thing off.
That request is published on the council’s own Local Plan website, and it is the part of this story the press release does not mention. On Wednesday 9 September the council’s Strategic Director, Cheryl Headon, wrote to two directors general at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The letter is blunt about why.
“It would not be sensible for us to commence our scoping consultation or undertake a Gateway 1 self-assessment based on assumptions that may shortly change, nor to commence work that could be abortive or inconsistent with the future geography of the area,” she wrote (letter to MHCLG, 9 September 2026).
The council consulted anyway. No reply from the ministry appears on the council’s letters to government page, which otherwise lists every item of correspondence on this since June.
What the council is actually asking you
This is the scoping stage, the first of the stages set by the government’s reformed plan-making system. The council is asking two questions (scoping consultation):
- how it should engage with communities and stakeholders while the plan is prepared
- how it should approach preparing the plan, given national policy changes and local circumstances
It is not asking where houses should go. The council says plainly that “no decisions are being made on specific development sites” at this stage, and that this is not the moment to put land forward. The Call for Sites closed in 2025.
The council describes the exercise as primarily technical, aimed at bodies such as National Highways and the Environment Agency. Anyone can take part.
Responses go through the council’s consultation portal or by post to City Offices, Colebrook Street. Anonymous responses will not be accepted. Paper copies of the notice and the guide are at the City Offices reception, weekdays 10am to 3pm, and at three libraries:
- Winchester Library, The Arc, Jewry Street
- Alresford Library, 20 Broad Street, New Alresford
- Bishops Waltham Library, Free Street
Councillor Jackie Porter, Cabinet member for place and the Local Plan, said the council was “very clear that the best way to protect our district, both now and in the future, is to have a Local Plan in place” (Winchester City Council). Her statement also acknowledges “uncertainty around future council arrangements”.
The council that would adopt this plan does not exist yet
That phrase is doing a lot of work, so here is what sits behind it.
Under the government’s March 2026 reorganisation decision, Winchester City Council was to be abolished on 1 April 2028. Most of the district would go to a new Mid Hampshire authority, with the Newlands parish area going to South East Hampshire.
The council’s published timetable runs well past that date:
| Stage | Date |
|---|---|
| Notice of intention to commence | 30 June 2026 |
| Scoping consultation (21 days) | 18 September 2026 |
| Gateway 1 | 30 October 2026 |
| Second consultation, content and evidence (6 weeks) | 19 March 2027 |
| Gateway 2 | 4 January 2028 |
| Third consultation, the final plan and its site allocations (8 weeks) | 4 February 2028 |
| Gateway 3 | 7 July 2028 |
| Submission to the Secretary of State | 30 October 2028 |
| Adoption | 30 April 2029 |
Source: Local Plan stages and Local Plan timetable, Winchester City Council.
The last three of those stages fall after the abolition date. The council said so itself in the September letter, noting that it “would cease to exist before the examination and adoption stages of the new 30-month plan-making process”.
Its own timetable, updated on 18 September, goes further. Against the adoption date it records: “Consideration of adoption of the Local Plan by the new Mid Hampshire Authority as the statutory development plan covering the former Winchester District.”
That sentence was on the council’s website eleven days after the government withdrew the decision that would have created the Mid Hampshire authority. The same page sets out the difficulty in its own words: “The timetables for Local Government Reorganisation and the new Local Plan process are currently not consistent.”
Then the ground moved again
On 7 September the government withdrew its reorganisation decision for Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, pending a rapid review (MHCLG). Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk were withdrawn at the same time.
So the Mid Hampshire boundary the council had been planning around is no longer settled either. The September letter spells out the consequence: “we do not yet know whether the previously proposed boundaries will remain, be amended or be replaced by a different arrangement following the rapid review.”
The letter asks for the Gateway 1 deadline of 30 October 2026 to be pushed back far enough for four things to happen:
- the rapid review of the Hampshire reorganisation proposals to conclude
- the transitional plan-making arrangements to be published
- the council’s outstanding questions to be answered
- the council to consider all of that before consulting
The minister had already said no to waiting
The council has written to the ministry six times since 1 June. It has had one published written answer.
On 20 July the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Local Government, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, replied to council leader Councillor Martin Tod. Her position was not ambiguous.
“We have been clear that upcoming local government reorganisation is not a reason to delay plan making,” she wrote (MHCLG, reference MC2026/16445). She said officials were working “at pace” on transitional arrangements that would answer the council’s questions once published.
Those arrangements had still not been published when the council wrote again in September.
The problem is written into the regulations
Winchester has gone further than complaining. It has sent the ministry a 13-page table of suggested changes to the regulations and guidance (Winchester City Council).
Its first point is precise. Regulation 19(b) of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 requires the council’s notice to identify “the geographical area to which the local plan is to relate”. It gives no way to amend that notice later when reorganisation moves the boundary.
The council’s suggested fix is to add the words “including any boundary changes resulting from Local Government Reorganisation”, so that plan-making does not have to restart when the map changes. It also asks for guidance allowing evidence to be prepared both with and without the boundary changes, and to be broken up and handed on to successor authorities.
Winchester is not doing this alone. On 29 July the four councils due to form Mid Hampshire, East Hampshire, New Forest, Test Valley and Winchester, sent the ministry a joint set of documents on their different plan-making positions (letter of 29 July 2026). Cabinet had already agreed on 30 June to explore a joint plan across the Mid Hampshire area.
Why there has to be a new plan at all
Winchester adopted its current Local Plan on 24 March 2026, after years of work. It is still the plan used to decide planning applications today, and it will be until the next one is adopted.
Adopting it started the clock on its replacement. Under the transitional arrangements that came with the 2024 National Planning Policy Framework, a council must begin a new plan if it had not published a Regulation 19 plan by 12 March 2025, or if its housing requirement is more than 20 per cent below its new local housing need figure (Local Plan FAQs).
The new plan will run from 2026 to 2044 and will allocate sites. It covers the Winchester district outside the South Downs National Park. If your village is inside the national park, the National Park Authority is your planning authority and a different plan applies.
What it means for you
Nothing about where houses go is being decided this month. If your interest is a specific field or a specific village, the stage that matters to you is the second consultation, due 19 March 2027 and running six weeks.
What is on the table now is how the council talks to residents over the next two and a half years. That is worth three weeks of your attention if you have ever found out about a scheme too late. Responses close at 23:59 on 9 October and must carry a name.
Two practical points. The plan that governs applications on your street today is the 2040 plan, not this one, and our guide to Winchester planning news sets out what it allocates and where. And if the rapid review changes the Hampshire map again, this timetable changes with it, so check the council’s dates before relying on them.
Sources
- Local Plan 2044 underway, Winchester City Council, 18 September 2026.
- Scoping consultation and Local Plan timetable, Winchester City Council.
- Letters to government, Winchester City Council, including the letters of 20 July and 9 September 2026.
- Local government reorganisation: programme review and decisions withdrawal, MHCLG, 7 September 2026.
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