Bury Unitary Development Plan

The Bury Unitary Development Plan (UDP) acts as a guide for the future development or protection of land in the Borough and together with other adopted Development Plan Documents its policies and proposals form the basis for the Council's decisions on planning applications.

The current Bury UDP was adopted by the Council on 29th August 1997. The Council is now working to replace the adopted UDP with a new document called the Bury Local Plan. Until the new Local Plan is produced the UDP will continue be used to make planning decisions. The UDP is available to download below.

In 2007 the Council had to decide which policies they wanted to keep until the new Local Plan was adopted. The Secretary of State agreed that all policies should be saved 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 below. However, since then various policies have now been replaced by policies in other development plan documents. 

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

The Joint Places for Everyone (PfE) Development Plan Document was adopted by Bury Council with effect from 21 March 2024 and supersedes some of the UDP policies, as set out in PfE Appendix A Table A.2 provided below.

In 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 it 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 adopted policies map, which incorporates the extant UDP policies can be accessed using our online maps.

You may also choose to buy a copy of our Unitary Development Plan and / or the original UDP proposals map.