(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.