(Emerging) Colchester Local Plan 2026-2041
This page will act as a central collation point for information relevant to the draft Local Plan currently being developed by Colchester City Council, and in particular its implications for the future of Langham: village? small urban settlement? or Colchester suburb?
The development and finalisation of the Local Plan is a multi-stage process which can take years. The live current plan for the period 2017 -2033 was only fully adopted in July 2022, but will expire in February 2026.
The development and finalisation of the Local Plan is a multi-stage process which can take years. The live current plan for the period 2017 -2033 was only fully adopted in July 2022, but will expire in February 2026.
Act I: Out of the Blue "Langham 900 houses" Announcement (4th Feb 2025)
As of February 2025, Colchester City Council (CCC) are presently minded to convert Langham from a semi-rural village into a small densely concentrated urban settlement by building 900 new homes in the agricultural farmland at the heart of the village. LPC were first informed of CCC's intentions late evening 4th February 2025, completely out of the blue with no prior consultation at all.
The current Local Plan expires in February 2026, so Colchester City Council are looking to finalise and formally adopt the new Local Plan from February 2026. Between now and then, there are various regulatory milestones that need to be met before the Local Plan is finally adopted into Law.
The next milestone (regulation 18 adoption) is likely to occur on Monday 17th February, when CCC's Local Plan Committee Members will take a formal vote on whether or not to approve CCC's current draft proposals. The vote applies to the plan as a complete package of all the recommended housing and commercial development site allocations across the whole of the Colchester area. If they vote to approve the package, this will then act as a trigger to commence a 6 week period of formal public consultation on the draft plan.
Whilst still somewhat in shock, Langham Parish Council have taken a number of immediate steps in the very few days at our disposal ahead of the 17th Feb CCC Local Plan Committee Meeting, as follows:
1) prepared an initial press release on 11th Feb, which was then picked up by the Colchester Gazette/Essex County Standard resulting in three articles so far, on 12th, 14th and 15th Feb.
2) briefed about 70 village residents at the Parish Council Meeting that was already fortuitously scheduled for 12th February. This meeting was also attended by Tom Rowe (CCC Ward Cllr) and Lewis Barber (Essex Cllr Constable Ward) who were very supportive and agreed to make representations at the CCC Local Plan meeting on 17th Feb. Parish Council Meeting notes to follow asap.
3) offered our support to a groundswell of village opinion minded to fight the Langham proposals, via a "Langham900" campaign, seeking initially to secure as many individual personalised email objections as possible. As of 2pm 17th February, 300 individual email objections had already been received by our Parish Clerk, and forwarded on to our Ward & County Councillor Representatives.
4) offered our support to a proposed polite "Save our Village" protest outside the Charter Hall venue ahead of the 17th February Meeting. About 50 villagers turned up with placards and were in good voice as Councillors arrived for the meeting.
5) submitted a detailed 5 page report to the Chairman of CCC's Local Plan Committee on 12th February, which was then circulated to all voting members of the Committee on 13th February.
6) applied for and successfully secured two separate "Have Your Say" presentation slots at the 17th February Meeting.
7) secured the support of our North Ward Councillor Tom Rowe to make a presentation on Langham's behalf at the same 17th February Meeting.
Once the 17th February Meeting has occurred, we will take stock and then endeavour to help the village take whatever further steps we can to try and save the village from this totally disproportionate and ill-conceived "plan" for Langham!!!
In the meantime, please do read the Langham900 briefing and send in your personal email objection as soon as possible. We did amazingly well in securing 300 emails in the 5 days between our Parish Council Meeting and the Local Plan Committee Meeting, but that is not the end of the campaign. If you haven't yet sent your email, please do continue to send them in so that we can continue to collate them and keep count of the overall total received.
The current Local Plan expires in February 2026, so Colchester City Council are looking to finalise and formally adopt the new Local Plan from February 2026. Between now and then, there are various regulatory milestones that need to be met before the Local Plan is finally adopted into Law.
The next milestone (regulation 18 adoption) is likely to occur on Monday 17th February, when CCC's Local Plan Committee Members will take a formal vote on whether or not to approve CCC's current draft proposals. The vote applies to the plan as a complete package of all the recommended housing and commercial development site allocations across the whole of the Colchester area. If they vote to approve the package, this will then act as a trigger to commence a 6 week period of formal public consultation on the draft plan.
Whilst still somewhat in shock, Langham Parish Council have taken a number of immediate steps in the very few days at our disposal ahead of the 17th Feb CCC Local Plan Committee Meeting, as follows:
1) prepared an initial press release on 11th Feb, which was then picked up by the Colchester Gazette/Essex County Standard resulting in three articles so far, on 12th, 14th and 15th Feb.
2) briefed about 70 village residents at the Parish Council Meeting that was already fortuitously scheduled for 12th February. This meeting was also attended by Tom Rowe (CCC Ward Cllr) and Lewis Barber (Essex Cllr Constable Ward) who were very supportive and agreed to make representations at the CCC Local Plan meeting on 17th Feb. Parish Council Meeting notes to follow asap.
3) offered our support to a groundswell of village opinion minded to fight the Langham proposals, via a "Langham900" campaign, seeking initially to secure as many individual personalised email objections as possible. As of 2pm 17th February, 300 individual email objections had already been received by our Parish Clerk, and forwarded on to our Ward & County Councillor Representatives.
4) offered our support to a proposed polite "Save our Village" protest outside the Charter Hall venue ahead of the 17th February Meeting. About 50 villagers turned up with placards and were in good voice as Councillors arrived for the meeting.
5) submitted a detailed 5 page report to the Chairman of CCC's Local Plan Committee on 12th February, which was then circulated to all voting members of the Committee on 13th February.
6) applied for and successfully secured two separate "Have Your Say" presentation slots at the 17th February Meeting.
7) secured the support of our North Ward Councillor Tom Rowe to make a presentation on Langham's behalf at the same 17th February Meeting.
Once the 17th February Meeting has occurred, we will take stock and then endeavour to help the village take whatever further steps we can to try and save the village from this totally disproportionate and ill-conceived "plan" for Langham!!!
In the meantime, please do read the Langham900 briefing and send in your personal email objection as soon as possible. We did amazingly well in securing 300 emails in the 5 days between our Parish Council Meeting and the Local Plan Committee Meeting, but that is not the end of the campaign. If you haven't yet sent your email, please do continue to send them in so that we can continue to collate them and keep count of the overall total received.
Act II: Colchester City Council Local Plan Committee Meeting (17th Feb 2025)
The purpose of the meeting was for Committee Members to review and approve (by majority vote of the 11 Committee Members) CCC's "Preferred Options Local Plan" , in order to trigger a 6 week public consultation on it (in accordance with Regulation 18, a statutory stage of the Local Plan adoption process). The meeting lasted for over 4 hours. Committee Members ultimately voted by 6-5 NOT to approve the Preferred Options Local Plan. This means that CCC's Planning Team will now need to come up with a fresh iteration of their Preferred Options Local Plan and reconvene the Committee for a fresh vote on whether they are happy to approve it for going out to public consultation. Committee Members set out some conditions to be met before they would be prepared to review the revised Plan and approve it for Regulation 18 consultation. These conditions mostly related to a desire to see stronger evidence of credible plans for delivery of the necessary infrastructure improvements to support the massive increase in housing numbers across the City and the surrounding villages.
The meeting was streamed live on CCC's youtube channel, and is now archived there in full.
Langham Parish Council made two "Have Your Say" statements, which can be found between 54:10 and 1:08:35 in the recording.
Cllr Thomas Rowe made a further statement on Langham's behalf, which starts at 2:16:24 in the recording.
These three statements, and the responses to them, are well worth a watch.
It would be fair to say that we did not feel that we received satisfactory answers to the concerns and questions that we raised! Do have a watch and let us know if you agree?
Copies of our three statement scripts can be found below:
Statement 1 (Allistair Hunter)
Statement 2 (Paul Armstrong)
Statement 3 (Cllr Thomas Rowe)
Copies of the Preferred Options Local Plan document submitted to the 17th Feb meeting for approval (but ultimately rejected by 6-5 majority vote) can be found in the Agenda Pack.
All of the supporting Evidence Base documentation can be found on CCC's Local Plan Evidence Base webpage.
Of particular interest is the Colchester Infrastructure Audit and Delivery Plan Stage 3 Report published on 7th Feb 2025. Page 21 and 22 of this report itemizes an indicative housing allocation 'scenario' provided to the report authors by CCC in November 2024, with a total of 286 houses projected for Langham, rather than the 900 included in the draft Preferred Options document. Although clearly labelled as a "scenario", it would surely seem reasonable to assume that this represented CCC's latest available thinking at that time?
Pages 141- 148 of the report address the audit findings in respect of sewerage infrastructure, making it very clear that Langham WRC has no headroom for any new housebuilding at all, but also that Anglian Water have no planned investment at Langham prior to 2050. CCC claim to have constructed their draft Preferred Options Local Plan based on the latest available emerging evidence base, so it is rather bizarre to observe that the Langham allocation 'scenario' from November 2024 has been revised massively upwards rather than significantly downwards. Further, the sewerage evidence presented in pages 141 - 148 of the Stage 3 Report had already been made available to CCC two months earlier on 4th December in the Stage 1&2 Report (pages 220-228), so it would appear that this very clear evidence has either been ignored or given extremely low priority during CCC's overall Local Plan evidence assessment.
The meeting was streamed live on CCC's youtube channel, and is now archived there in full.
Langham Parish Council made two "Have Your Say" statements, which can be found between 54:10 and 1:08:35 in the recording.
Cllr Thomas Rowe made a further statement on Langham's behalf, which starts at 2:16:24 in the recording.
These three statements, and the responses to them, are well worth a watch.
It would be fair to say that we did not feel that we received satisfactory answers to the concerns and questions that we raised! Do have a watch and let us know if you agree?
Copies of our three statement scripts can be found below:
Statement 1 (Allistair Hunter)
Statement 2 (Paul Armstrong)
Statement 3 (Cllr Thomas Rowe)
Copies of the Preferred Options Local Plan document submitted to the 17th Feb meeting for approval (but ultimately rejected by 6-5 majority vote) can be found in the Agenda Pack.
All of the supporting Evidence Base documentation can be found on CCC's Local Plan Evidence Base webpage.
Of particular interest is the Colchester Infrastructure Audit and Delivery Plan Stage 3 Report published on 7th Feb 2025. Page 21 and 22 of this report itemizes an indicative housing allocation 'scenario' provided to the report authors by CCC in November 2024, with a total of 286 houses projected for Langham, rather than the 900 included in the draft Preferred Options document. Although clearly labelled as a "scenario", it would surely seem reasonable to assume that this represented CCC's latest available thinking at that time?
Pages 141- 148 of the report address the audit findings in respect of sewerage infrastructure, making it very clear that Langham WRC has no headroom for any new housebuilding at all, but also that Anglian Water have no planned investment at Langham prior to 2050. CCC claim to have constructed their draft Preferred Options Local Plan based on the latest available emerging evidence base, so it is rather bizarre to observe that the Langham allocation 'scenario' from November 2024 has been revised massively upwards rather than significantly downwards. Further, the sewerage evidence presented in pages 141 - 148 of the Stage 3 Report had already been made available to CCC two months earlier on 4th December in the Stage 1&2 Report (pages 220-228), so it would appear that this very clear evidence has either been ignored or given extremely low priority during CCC's overall Local Plan evidence assessment.
Act III: Revised Local Plan Timetable (4th Mar 2025)
A revised Local Plan timetable was agreed at an emergency Local Plan Committee meeting held on 4th March. The new timetable incorporates a 9 month delay to allow for the completion of a costed Infrastructure Delivery Plan to underpin the Local Plan proposals, before putting out the Local Plan for a 6-week public consultation period starting in November or December 2025. Langham Parish Council have requested a meeting with the Colchester Local Plan Team to discuss our concerns with the 900 homes proposal, which we hope to hold by mid April, We will provide a further update once that meeting has occurred.
Act IV: Wrong Answer, Councillors, Please Vote Again! (7th May 2025)
Langham Parish Council managed to meet with the Colchester Local Planning Team on Thursday 17th April to air our concerns about the Langham 900 proposals. They acknowledged the highly disproportionate growth allocation proposed for Langham. They stated that potential urban sites for growth in Colchester were close to exhausted, forcing them to allocate more growth to surrounding villages. They expressed the view that the Langham site had “merit”. In response, we expressed the view that growth of this scale in Langham was unsustainable and would almost certainly be deemed unsound by the Independent Planning Inspector at a later stage in the process. We learned that the Local Planning Team do have a number of potential “reserve” sites available, beyond those included in their current proposals. We were encouraged to supply alternative well-evidenced proposals for Langham, which it would be their duty to carefully consider and assess.
On 22nd April, we learned from Councillor Barber that the Local Plan Committee Chairman was making arrangements to take a repeat vote on the exact same set of Local Plan proposals that had been rejected by Councillors at the 17th February public meeting. A couple of days later, this was confirmed when the agenda for said meeting was posted on the Colchester City Council website. The public meeting date is scheduled for Wed 7th May.
On 30th April, Langham Parish Council’s Planning Committee held an emergency meeting to review how best to respond to this new turn of events. We concluded, sadly, that it is almost inevitable that the vote on 7th May will reverse the decision of 17th February. This will very quickly trigger a six week public consultation on CCC’s draft Local Plan proposals. As such, our future efforts, with support from villagers, should focus primarily on what will happen after the 7th May, rather than railing against the iniquity of an almost inevitable decision that day. We will of course request a formal “Have Your Say” slot to register our disappointment for the record - but we see very little additional benefit in encouraging residents to repeat the placard waving heroics of February, for two main reasons. Practically, it would prove difficult because of the small and poorly accessible venue chosen (cynically?) for the meeting. Strategically, because there are some much more productive avenues into which we hope to channel concerned residents’ time and efforts, soon after the 7th May meeting.
A six week public consultation on the Local Plan is likely to commence in mid to late May. It will be important that as many Langham residents as possible participate in this process. We will be looking to set up a public village meeting to provide ideas and guidance on how best to engage with the consultation. We have pencilled in a provisional date of Wed 21st May, from 6pm in the Langham Community Centre, but we will confirm or revise this as soon as possible after the 7th May Local Plan Committee Meeting.
In the background, LPC is taking a number of other longer term steps which we hope will help our case further down the line in the Local Plan development process. We are commissioning a Local Housing Needs survey, which we will invite all residents to complete in due course. We have been engaging with the Dedham Vale Society and Dedham Parish Council to warn them of the potential adverse impacts of the Langham 900 proposals, and have already received promising feedback offering their support. We are taking initial steps to speak with Land Agents representing the landowners of the Langham 900 site, to learn more about the status of their development proposals.
On 22nd April, we learned from Councillor Barber that the Local Plan Committee Chairman was making arrangements to take a repeat vote on the exact same set of Local Plan proposals that had been rejected by Councillors at the 17th February public meeting. A couple of days later, this was confirmed when the agenda for said meeting was posted on the Colchester City Council website. The public meeting date is scheduled for Wed 7th May.
On 30th April, Langham Parish Council’s Planning Committee held an emergency meeting to review how best to respond to this new turn of events. We concluded, sadly, that it is almost inevitable that the vote on 7th May will reverse the decision of 17th February. This will very quickly trigger a six week public consultation on CCC’s draft Local Plan proposals. As such, our future efforts, with support from villagers, should focus primarily on what will happen after the 7th May, rather than railing against the iniquity of an almost inevitable decision that day. We will of course request a formal “Have Your Say” slot to register our disappointment for the record - but we see very little additional benefit in encouraging residents to repeat the placard waving heroics of February, for two main reasons. Practically, it would prove difficult because of the small and poorly accessible venue chosen (cynically?) for the meeting. Strategically, because there are some much more productive avenues into which we hope to channel concerned residents’ time and efforts, soon after the 7th May meeting.
A six week public consultation on the Local Plan is likely to commence in mid to late May. It will be important that as many Langham residents as possible participate in this process. We will be looking to set up a public village meeting to provide ideas and guidance on how best to engage with the consultation. We have pencilled in a provisional date of Wed 21st May, from 6pm in the Langham Community Centre, but we will confirm or revise this as soon as possible after the 7th May Local Plan Committee Meeting.
In the background, LPC is taking a number of other longer term steps which we hope will help our case further down the line in the Local Plan development process. We are commissioning a Local Housing Needs survey, which we will invite all residents to complete in due course. We have been engaging with the Dedham Vale Society and Dedham Parish Council to warn them of the potential adverse impacts of the Langham 900 proposals, and have already received promising feedback offering their support. We are taking initial steps to speak with Land Agents representing the landowners of the Langham 900 site, to learn more about the status of their development proposals.