Pendle adopts local plan
The Lancashire authority is now on a more stable planning footing as it can once again demonstrate a five-year supply of housing sites.
Following government approval, Pendle Council has adopted its updated local plan, which will run until 2040.
It sets out where homes can be built across the borough over the next 15 years, takes a brownfield-first approach to development, and reduces the annual delivery target from 298 homes to 148 under the NPPF transitional arrangements.
This in turn means that Pendle can demonstrate a five-year supply of housing sites, giving the local plan more teeth when it comes to determining applications and removing the current need to apply the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
Pendle Council Leader Cllr David Whipp praised the officer team for its hard work in refreshing the local plan.
“This has been like painting the Forth bridge,” he said. “It has at times been a thankless task.”
While welcoming the adoption of the up-to-date plan, Whipp cautioned that the Labour government’s “unrealistically high” housing targets would force the council into making further changes in the future.
The next time Pendle refreshes its local plan it will have to do so with the aim of delivering 382 units annually in line with revised national housing targets.
Conservative councillor Sarah Cockburn-Price blasted housing secretary Steve Reed and his predecessor Angela Rayner for their pro-development narrative.
The latter came in for particular criticism for removing the urban uplift mechanism in calculating housing targets, which has eased the delivery burdens on cities.
“All that has done is take away development from where it needs to be…and spread it randomly around the shires,” she said.
Pendle Council has also voted to adopt an updated empty homes strategy aimed at bringing vacant properties back into use to address housing shortages across the borough.
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Well done to Pendle! Sadly, the proposed NPPF will ruin all this great work!
By Anonymous
A very weak inspector allowed this to happen. It has made a mockery of the Government’s housing targets. Cockburn-Price has been anti-development and a huge NIMBY for a number of years now. Pendle will now encounter a huge decline until they are forced to consider the NPPF housing targets in a few years time.
By Anon
@ Anonymous (December 22, 2025 at 11:59 am) – The transitional arrangements set out in annex A of the proposed new NPPF would mean that a plan prepared under the current (December 2024) NPPF remains valid unless it is out of date. It does not become out of date purely because it was prepared under the current NPPF – the proposed NPPF is clear that it should only be applied to new plans being prepared under the new system, that is plans progressed after next year’s deadline for submitting plans under the current system.
By Peter Kenton
Good for them – mock the government targets and fight them ! More of this to help make transparent the ridiculous notion that millions of houses need to be built while millions are out of use as holiday lets / student slums / land-banked empty property.
By John Smith