Harrogate district local plan

The local plan sets the scale of planned new development and a strategy for accommodating this growth; includes detailed policies across several thematic areas to manage new development; and allocates specific sites for particular types of development.

The local plan forms part of the statutory development plan and is used to determine applications for planning permission across the district. Details of other documents that make up the development plan can be found by visiting the current planning policies page.

View the local plan

The local plan is available to view in HTML format on our consultation portal and in PDF format below. All policies are listed on the contents page and a summary of each chapter is included in the introduction:

 Introduction vision and objectives growth strategy and economy chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 (pdf / 6 MB)

 Housing transport and infrastructure and climate change chapters 5, 6 and 7 (pdf / 2 MB)

 Heritage and placemaking and natural environment chapters 8 and 9 (pdf / 9 MB)

 Delivery and monitoring policy DM1 housing allocations (pdf / 17 MB)

 Delivery and monitoring policy DM1 housing commitments (pdf / 5 MB)

 Delivery and monitoring policies DM2, DM3 and DM4 (pdf / 3 MB)

 Policies map district and designated rural areas (pdf / 14 MB)

 Policies map main settlements - Harrogate (pdf / 12 MB)

 Policies map main settlements - Knaresborough (pdf / 6 MB)

 Policies map main settlements - Ripon (pdf / 4 MB)

 Policies map local service centres Boroughbridge, Masham and Pateley Bridge (pdf / 5 MB)

 Policies map villages (pdf / 8 MB)

 Appendices (pdf / 895 KB)

Development of the local plan

The local plan was adopted on 4 March 2020 and the  adoption statement (March 2020) (pdf / 119 KB) is available to view.

Following adoption, a legal challenge was raised against the new settlement policies in the High Court and a judgement was issued on 26 November 2020.

In line with the court order accompanying the judgement the whole of the local plan was remitted to the council to consider whether or not to accept the Inspector's recommendations in so far as they related to the new settlement policies and whether or not to adopt the local plan with those policies, taking into account the full Sustainability Appraisal (SA) documentation and consultation responses.

The council adopted the local plan with the new settlement policies on 9 December 2020. The  adoption statement (pdf / 84 KB) and  sustainability appraisal post-adoption statement (pdf / 750 KB) are available to view.

The key stages in the development of the local plan are set out below:

• issues and options (July 2015)
• draft development management policies (November 2015)
• draft local plan (November 2016)
• additional sites (July 2017)
• publication draft (January 2018)
• submission (August 2018)
• examination hearings (January 2019)
• proposed main modifications and additional sustainability appraisal work (July 2020)
• inspectors report (January 2020)
• adoption of the local plan (March 2020); adoption of the local plan including new settlement policies (December 2020)