Unitary development plan

The Bury Unitary Development Plan (UDP) is prepared by the Planning Policy Section. It acts as a guide for the future development or protection of land in the Borough.

Bury UDP contains a wide variety of policies and proposals. Some of these indicate where development, such as housing or industry, is considered acceptable. Others seek to control development in order to protect the environment or valuable areas of open space.

Bury Council generally make planning decisions in line with the development plan. There may be some cases where other important considerations mean the Council makes a different decision.

The current Bury UDP was adopted by the Council on 29 August 1997. The Council is now working to replace the adopted UDP with a new set of documents called the Bury Local Plan. Until the new Local Plan is produced the UDP will still be used to make planning decisions.

The Council had to decide which policies they wanted to keep until the new Local Plan was adopted. The Secretary of State then had to decide which policies could be kept. All policies were kept apart from Policy OL7/1 (East Lancashire Paper Mill Water Catchment Area). This means that this policy is no longer used to make planning decisions. The list of saved policies confirmed by the Secretary of State is provided in a letter which is available to download from this page.

The Greater Manchester Joint Waste Development Plan Document and Greater Manchester Minerals Plan have also been adopted and supercede the minerals and waste policies in the Bury UDP.

National Planning Policy Framework

In March 2012, the Government published the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The NPPF maintains the Government's commitment to a plan-led system whereby planning decisions must be made in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. The NPPF states that policies within the NPPF are material considerations and that due weight should be given to relevant policies in existing plans according to their degree of consistency with the NPPF.

As a result, the Council has undertaken an assessment to determine consistency between the policies within the UDP and those set out in the NPPF. The assessment will form the basis for determining the degree of weight that should be attached to existing UDP policies and instances where policies in the NPPF should take precedence in the development management process.

The full assessment is available to download from this page.

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