The first consultation on the borough's new Local Plan is open until 5pm on 26 October. The council writing it is abolished in April 2027, before adoption.

Update, 15 September 2026: the scoping consultation opened on Monday 14 September and runs until 5pm on 26 October. Take part online at reigate-banstead.gov.uk/scoping-consultation. The council says this stage will not consider preferred locations for growth, specific sites or the final number of homes (council news release, 14 September 2026).

The first chance to comment on the plan that will decide where homes go in Reigate, Redhill, Banstead and Horley until 2044 opened on Monday 14 September.

Reigate & Banstead Borough Council has now published its Local Plan 2044 timetable. It sets the scoping public consultation to run from 14 September 2026 into October 2026.

That timetable did not exist in public a fortnight ago. The council gave notice on 31 July that it intended to start work on a new plan, and told residents to visit webpages that had not been built. Those pages are now live.

What the plan is

The new plan will replace two documents that currently decide planning applications in the borough: the 2014 Core Strategy and the 2019 Development Management Plan.

It covers the whole borough, listed in the notice by its statutory area code E07000211. Its formal title is the Reigate & Banstead Local Plan 2044.

The council says the plan will set out where development such as homes, commercial space and facilities will go, and guide what that development looks like.

The full timetable

Date Stage
31 July 2026 Public notice to commence
14 September to October 2026 Scoping public consultation
December 2026 Gateway 1
April 2027 East Surrey Council is established
June to July 2027 Consultation on draft vision, aims and objectives, including the spatial strategy
December 2027 to January 2028 Gateway 2
March to May 2028 Consultation on proposed policies, site allocations, designations, policy map and environmental assessment
October 2028 Gateway 3
December 2028 Plan submitted for examination
January to May 2029 Examination
June 2029 Adoption

Two things stand out in that list.

The first is that the council has written its own abolition into the schedule as a stage. Reigate & Banstead Borough Council will cease to exist in April 2027 and be replaced by East Surrey Council. The borough’s own Strategic Infrastructure Programme, updated in March 2026, states it plainly: “In April 2027 RBBC will be abolished and merge with other Councils to become East Surrey Council.”

So the authority starting this plan will be gone before stage five of eleven. East Surrey Council will run the two later consultations, the examination and the adoption. We set out which body takes over which service in our guide to who runs what from April 2027.

The second is the length. The notice to commence says the council expects to publish its Gateway 1 self-assessment summary in December 2026, and that this “will mark the start of the 30-month plan preparation process”. Thirty months from December 2026 lands in June 2029, which is exactly where the timetable puts adoption.

Surrey is not affected by the September pause

This matters because national headlines last week said the opposite.

On 7 September the Minister for Local Government, Jim McMahon, withdrew reorganisation decisions for Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and put a further set of July decisions under review. Councils in those areas were told to stop implementation work.

Surrey is not in that group. The letter says: “This does not impact the decision taken in Surrey.”

East Surrey Council still arrives on 1 April 2027, and the Local Plan timetable above still stands.

The housing question underneath it

The plan’s hardest decision is how many homes to allow, and the evidence for that is already published.

The council’s current Core Strategy target is 460 homes a year. The borough has been building more than that. Its own Housing Needs Assessment, prepared by Iceni Projects and Justin Gardner Consulting in July 2024, records:

  • net completions averaging 573 homes a year from 2012 to 2023
  • an average of 722 homes a year since 2020
  • peak delivery of 785 homes in 2020/21

On future need, the assessment applies the national standard method and reports two figures:

  • 644 homes a year, when the calculation is capped against the adopted Core Strategy target
  • 1,123 homes a year, with the cap set against household growth instead

The assessment calls the higher figure “a more reasonable ‘policy off’ assessment of housing need for plan-making purposes”. Using a 2024 base and 2023 affordability data, it drops slightly to 1,119. The consultants considered whether there were exceptional circumstances to depart from the standard method in either direction, and concluded there were none.

One caution before those numbers get quoted as a target. The assessment itself draws “an important distinction” between housing need and the housing requirement a local plan sets. The requirement is settled later, by weighing need against land availability and constraints including the Green Belt.

No site list yet

If you want to know which fields are in play, the honest answer today is that nobody can tell you.

The Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, the document that lists and grades potential development sites, has not been published. The council says its planning policy team is still working on it and it “is not yet ready for publication”.

The most recent one for the borough dates from May 2018, and was evidence for the current Development Management Plan. The council expects several versions of the new assessment before the plan is adopted.

Landowners and developers put sites forward through a Call for Sites. Inclusion of a site on any list does not mean it will be allocated, and it grants no permission.

What it means for you

The scoping consultation is the earliest stage, and that is precisely why it is worth using. It shapes what the plan asks about before any site is drawn on a map.

To take part or follow it:

  • The consultation opened on Monday 14 September and closes at 5pm on 26 October. It asks about housing, the economy, transport, infrastructure, climate change, the natural environment, heritage and health, and about the vision for the plan.
  • The easiest way to respond is online at reigate-banstead.gov.uk/scoping-consultation. Paper questionnaires can be returned by email to planning.policy@reigate-banstead.gov.uk or by post to the Planning Policy Team at Reigate Town Hall.
  • Consultation materials and paper surveys are at the Town Hall and at Banstead, Horley, Merstham, Redhill, Reigate and Tattenham Corner libraries. For another format, call 01737 276 178.
  • You can join the council’s planning policy mailing list through its Local Plan 2044 page for later stages.
  • The timetable can be inspected in person at the Council Offices reception, Reigate Town Hall, Castlefield Road, Reigate RH2 0SH, from 9am to 5pm Monday to Thursday and 9am to 4.45pm on Friday. Reception closes at 4pm on the second Wednesday of each month.
  • Copies are also available at the borough’s libraries, or by email from planning.policy@reigate-banstead.gov.uk.

Two later stages carry more weight for anyone worried about a particular field. The June to July 2027 consultation covers the spatial strategy, meaning the broad pattern of where growth goes. The March to May 2028 consultation is the one that names individual sites.

Until the new plan is adopted in 2029, applications continue to be decided under the 2014 Core Strategy and the 2019 Development Management Plan. You can follow live cases on our Reigate planning applications page and recent decisions in our planning news round-up.

Sources

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