City Plan 2040 Modifications
Modifications consultation
Following the hearing sessions held during spring 2025 as part of the Local Plan examination, the Planning Inspectors proposed a list of Main Modifications to the plan. The City Corporation consulted upon these modifications between 15 December and 6 February 2026. The Proposed Main Modifications, the Sustainability Appraisal and the Habitats Regulation Assessment Matrix were consulted upon as part of the formal process into soundness and legal compliance. The Atlas of Change and Additional Modifications were consulted on for completeness but they do not fall within the scope of the examination process.
What are modifications?
Main Modifications are changes to the Regulation 19 version of City Plan 2040 that will affect the ‘soundness’ and ‘legal compliance’ of the plan. The changes have been proposed by the Planning Inspectors as part of the examination process. The modifications aim to propose changes that will enable the Local Plan to be formally adopted.
The Inspectors undertaking the Local Plan Examination, J Bridgwater PGDipTP MRTPI and A Phillips BA(Hons), DipTP, MTP, MRTPI, have produced the modifications, which the Corporation is consulting on their behalf. This is without prejudice to the Inspectors’ ultimate conclusions and recommendations on the Plan.
A track changes version of the Plan was prepared for illustrative purposes.
What are additional modifications and how are they different from main modifications?
Additional modifications are minor changes which do not affect the plan's ‘soundness’ or materially affect the plan’s policies, including typos and updates to factual information.
We have chosen to include a list of minor amendments to the plan which are published alongside the consultation. While the Proposed Additional Modifications are available for information, they are not put before the inspectors for consideration and did not form part of this consultation. There are separate schedules of modifications for both the Main and Additional Modifications.
The Atlas of Change provides an illustrative tool to set out where changes in the policies maps have occurred during the Examination in Public process.
What's next?
Following the consultation, the responses have been collated and sent to the Planning Inspectors for their consideration. The Inspectors will consider all responses along with what has been presented throughout the examination period to determine whether the Local Plan is considered ‘sound’ and legally compliant.
The conclusions will be presented in a written report of their final recommendations including the Main Modifications necessary to make the plan sound. If found sound, the City Corporation can then move forward to adopt City Plan 2040.
Main and Additional Modifications
Additional Appraisals
Atlas of Change
Privacy
Please note that all representations are made public on our website in line with the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning)(England) Regulations 2012. This includes the name of the person and, where relevant, the organisation making the representation. Save as set out below, all other personal information will remain confidential and managed in line with the City Corporation’s privacy notice. For more information on how we collect and process personal information, and your rights in relation to that information, please refer to the Environment Department's privacy notice available below. The City Corporation is unable to accept anonymous representations, or representations without a means of principal contact (e.g. email address or postal address). A copy of all representations has be made available in full to the Planning Inspectorate and to the person appointed by the Secretary of State to conduct the examination (i.e. the Inspector). In respect of the Planning Inspectorate (including any programme officer) this will include providing them with the contact details of persons who made representations so that they can contact participants and administer the examination. The Planning Inspectorate's Privacy Notice available at Planning Inspectorate: privacy notices - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) provides guidance on how your personal information will be processed by the Planning Inspectorate.
Responses to the Modifications Consultation
Some Modifications were submitted by Microsoft Forms so the response provided by those individuals is in the Main and Additional Modifications Consultations Responses CSV. Responses provided by email are presented as PDFs on this page.