Gateway 1 self-assessment has been prepared to meet the requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026.
Gateway 1 is the first of 3 mandatory ‘gateways’ in the plan-making process for Local Plans. It is intended to help increase the transparency of the preparation of Leeds’s new Local Plan for our local communities and other stakeholders.
Gateway 1 involves self-assessing the council’s readiness to start the 30-month plan preparation process and publishing a summary of this self-assessment. The publication of this self-assessment formally marks the start of the 30-month period.
It should be noted that the Planning Inspectorate does not carry out any assessment or provide observations or advice at Gateway 1.
How we got ready to prepare a new local plan
We formally started preparing a new local plan for Leeds on 19 October 2026. This follows a four-month notification period that commenced with publication of our Notice to Commence Plan preparation on 18 June 2026. During this period we undertook a Scoping Consultation on the Local Plan.
Government policy says we should adopt the new plan within 30 months of this date. This is to help ensure we have an up-to-date local plan that responds to the needs of the area and our communities.
This page explains what we did to get ready to meet the 30-month timeframe. It also has links to further information and where you can get updates.
We published a timetable for preparing the plan
The Local Plan timetable has been published on our website. The timetable shows when we expect to carry out the different stages and activities for preparing a plan. It helps us check if and how we can adopt the plan within the 30-month timeframe. We’ll keep this updated as we make more progress.
The timetable shows each of the key stages in the plan-making process, and the dates that we expect to meet them. It anticipates the plan being adopted in March 2029, in line with the 30-month timeframe expected by the Government.
To ensure we deliver our plan within 30 months, we;
- will use the views and information shared with us through previous consultations on the Leeds Local Plan (and particularly the consultation on the ‘Issues and Options’ that took place in Summer 2025) to help inform the summaries of proposed policies and potential site options that are presented as part of the ‘Plan Content and Evidence’ consultation.
- have already developed and collated a lot of evidence that helps to identify the issues that the plan needs to address and can be used to help inform decisions on potential policies and sites. We have also identified the evidence that we still need, and are making steps to gather this;
- are using digital tools to help present consultation material in an engaging way, with digital response forms that help us analyse the responses more efficiently
- will take reports with information and updates on the Local Plan to our ‘Strategic Planning Panel’ regularly as we are preparing the Plan. This will enable elected members, from a representative range of political parties, to understand the evidence that is informing the local plan and help shape its proposed policies throughout the plan-making process.
- are, where appropriate, using nationally available tools and data to help assess sites and inform policies.
We established project management and governance arrangements
Preparing a local plan is a complex process. It involves many people across the council and from other organisations. Thinking early about how the work is planned, managed and signed off helps us monitor our progress and keep the work on track. It also helps us anticipate and manage any risks to us adopting the plan within 30 months.
We've developed a project plan to help us prepare the plan in line with our local plan timetable and will meet regularly with our key decision makers to monitor how this is going. Some potential risks to preparing the plan within 30 months have been identified, and processes are in place to monitor, manage and mitigate these.
Guidance advises us to consider our governance procedures and to ensure we have efficient sign off processes in place with key decisions makers. The Council has clear and well-established processes in place for ensuring that the Council’s senior leadership are briefed on key workstreams, and existing governance arrangements enable efficient sign off.
The Executive Member for Transport and Planning is the Council’s political lead on planning policy matters. A range of committees, made up of elected representatives, will also have a role in the governance of the Local Plan. This includes the Strategic Planning Panel, Infrastructure and Investment Scrutiny Board, Executive Board and Full Council.
We planned how we’ll consult on the plan
Public consultation is essential for the local plan to represent the needs of our communities. It must be easy for people to have their say in a way that works for them, so they can influence the way the area develops. By planning this early, we can ensure people are aware in advance and can get involved from the start.
We have undertaken a scoping consultation to get people’s views on what the plan could contain and how we propose to consult on the plan at key stages.
We will use the comments from this consultation to help us prepare an engagement strategy. This will set out how we’ll consult and communicate with our communities as we continue to prepare the plan. As we are expecting significant engagement from our residents, we aim to provide a wide range of engagement opportunities. The Engagement Plan will be developed using the principles established through the council’s Statement of Community Involvement (SCI)
You can find information about upcoming consultation activities on our website and social media channels.
We began scoping the content of the plan
Scoping includes considering how well the existing plan is working and gathering baseline information about the area. This helps to identify our future needs and ambitions. Starting this early means we can begin preparing the new plan with a clear vision, making it quicker and easier to consult on the plan and make decisions about it.
To gain an understanding of the development needs for our area, we have begun to collate evidence about our area and the needs to plan needs to provide for. We have also considered responses to previous consultations, and how well our current local plan is working and what may need changing.
Using the information we have gathered along with the input from our decision makers, we have begun to draft a vision for the area and started to understand the development requirements for our area. We have also started to identify where new developments could be located and look at what new planning policies and information or data we’d need for decision making about new developments
We will consult on the proposed content of the plan, the evidence that we have gathered so far and further evidence that we intend to collate, as part of the ‘Plan Content and Evidence’ Consultation over Winter 2026/27.
We began a Strategic Environmental Assessment
We’re legally required to identify, describe and evaluate likely significant effects on the environment of implementing the local plan, and reasonable alternatives to it (taking into account the plan’s objectives and scope).
This process will consider how community, national and international environmental protection objectives and any other environmental challenges are taken into account in the plan. It will help us to predict significant environmental effects and develop ways of preventing, reducing and offsetting these. This is called a ‘Strategic Environmental Assessment’ (or ‘SEA’).
It is important we start this work early and are transparent about how we’re doing the assessment when engaging stakeholders and communities.
At this stage, we have:
- started to develop SEA objectives, and identified the factors that will be taken into account when assessing the likely significant effects of the Plan;
- identified other relevant plans or programmes, and their relationship to the Local Plan;
- identified the relevant environmental protection objectives and environmental considerations that will be taken into account during the preparation of the plan; and
- collated information about the existing environmental characteristics of the district, and historic / likely future trends, to provide a ‘baseline’ that we can assess the likely effects of different options against.
This information is being brought together in a draft SEA report, which also sets out the scope and level of detail we intend to include in the assessment. This will be published alongside the ‘Plan, Content and Evidence’ consultation this Winter, and any feedback will be used to help finalise the assessment methodology.
How to stay up to date
You can also request to be added to the Local Plan mailing list by emailing localplan@leeds.gov.uk. Everyone on the mailing list is automatically notified of any consultations taking place about the Local Plan.
