Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to the Policy Paper entitled Levelling Up and Regeneration: further information, published by his Department on 11 May 2022, what his timescale is for providing further information will be available on the proposed alignment test to replace the duty to co-operate.

The duty to cooperate is widely agreed not to have achieved this objective.  Therefore, the duty will be abolished by the current draft of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, and replaced by a more flexible requirement for authorities to align emerging plan proposals with neighbouring planning authorities and other public bodies and infrastructure providers where relevant.

The new policy requirement will be an important element of local plan examinations by a planning inspector, who can form a planning judgement on the proposals put forward.

This policy requirement is still being developed and is intended to be set out in a revised National Planning Policy Framework, which will be subject to further consultation in due course.  However, the important difference is that as a policy requirement, shortcomings in alignment can be capable of being rectified by the planning authority or inspector, whereas under the current duty to cooperate, failures result in the failure of the local plan.