The government is revoking the regional planning policy document, the South East Plan. The revocation will take effect on 25 March.
This is part of the government’s drive towards ‘localism’. Councils in the South East will have more latitude to set their own planning policies as they no longer need to comply with regional policy.
The abolition of this plan might not make much immediate difference to the detail of most planning applications. Its demise is likely to be felt more in relation to housing numbers. Councils are likely to scale down the number of houses for which they need to find sites.
One circumstance where it might have an impact straight away is where a housing proposal is being justified on a shortfall in housing land supply, based on South East Plan figures. It remains to be seen how councils and inspectors deal with these planning applications.