On 18 May 2026 the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published a list. It named 82 local planning authorities awarded Legacy System Plan Funding, £36,585.36 each, to help them submit a local plan for examination under the old plan-making system before the door closes on 31 December 2026.
Every one of those plans will be examined against the December 2024 National Planning Policy Framework. None of them will be examined against the framework that replaced it on 17 August 2026, which is the one that now decides planning applications. And the new framework contains a sentence, in an annex most readers will never reach, that decides what happens to those plans on the day they are adopted.
This piece follows that sentence through. It is about what a council gets when it finishes a plan under the old rules, what the new rules do to it, and how long the consequences last.
The deadline, and who is racing it.
A new local plan-making system came into force on 25 March 2026. Councils already preparing a plan under the existing system were allowed to finish it, on one condition. The government's guidance, Rollout of the new local plan-making system, puts it plainly: a council progressing a plan under the existing system has until 31 December 2026 to submit it for examination. The statutory version is in the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026.
The 82 funded councils are the clearest measure of who is taking that route. To qualify, a council had to be short of its final Regulation 19 consultation or submission on 28 January 2026, with a timetable showing submission by 31 December. The list is a floor, not a census. Eligible councils that did not apply are not on it.
The Planning Inspectorate can see the queue forming. Its annual report for 2025/26 records 25 plans submitted in the year, against 44 the year before, and explains the drop as councils deciding "to postpone submissions until later in 2026, ahead of the December 2026 deadline". In July Matthew Pennycook, the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, wrote to the Inspectorate's interim chief executive that "we are approaching a period of higher demand for local plan examination services".
Which rulebook each plan is examined against.
The August 2026 framework is written for the new system. Its implementation annex, Annex A, says plans prepared under the new system "should be produced in accordance with this Framework" (paragraph 4). Everything else is sent back a version.
"Any other plans should be produced in accordance with the version of this Framework published in December 2024, unless any of the transitional arrangements in Annex 1 to that Framework apply."
That is paragraph 8. Plans that reached their Regulation 19 stage after 12 March 2025, which covers the funded 82, fall under December 2024. Some that were further on sit on older versions still. In September the inspector examining Horsham's plan confirmed it "will therefore be examined under the previous version of the National Planning Policy Framework, which was published in September 2023". The inspectors examining South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse reached the same answer for December 2023.
The councils know. Cotswold District Council's Regulation 19 plan, published in August, says at paragraph 1.18 that it "has been prepared and will be considered having regard to the policies and requirements of the December 2024 NPPF".
So far this is ordinary transition. Rules change and work in progress finishes under the rules it started under. The problem begins at adoption.
What happens on the day of adoption.
A plan does not stop at examination. Once adopted it becomes the development plan, and under section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 applications must be decided in accordance with it unless material considerations indicate otherwise. The national framework is one of those material considerations. How the two interact has always depended on a rule about weight.
Under the December 2024 framework the rule was a dial. Paragraph 232 said existing policies should be given "due weight … according to their degree of consistency with this Framework (the closer the policies in the plan to the policies in the Framework, the greater the weight that may be given)". A decision maker judged how close the fit was and weighted accordingly.
The August 2026 framework replaces the dial with a switch.
Development plan policies (or parts of those policies) which are materially inconsistent with national decision-making policies in this Framework should be given very limited weight. The only exception to this is where they have been examined and adopted or made against this Framework.— National Planning Policy Framework, Annex A, paragraph 2 · Ground Level, August 2026
Three things about that sentence matter.
First, it compares local policies only with the framework's national decision-making policies, the half of each chapter that applies to planning applications. Second, the result is fixed. Once a policy, or part of one, is found to be materially inconsistent, it gets very limited weight, and the decision maker has no discretion to give it more. Third, the only exception is a plan "examined and adopted … against this Framework". A plan examined under December 2024 cannot qualify, however recently it was adopted. Most of the funded 82 will be adopted in 2027 and 2028 into a framework that has already disqualified them from its protection.
"Materially inconsistent" is not defined anywhere in the framework. It appears once, in this paragraph.
What the government was told.
The approach was consulted on as question 192 of the December 2025 draft. The government's response, published with the framework in August, records 669 answers: 41% agreed, 32% disagreed. It summarises the objections this way.
Concerns were also expressed that the need to consider inconsistency between development plan policies and national decision-making policies could lead to increased debate and potential litigation.— National Planning Policy Framework consultation: government response, question 192 · Ground Level, August 2026
The same passage records concern that the approach "could undermine the plan-led system and disincentivise plan-making". The government decided "to proceed with the proposed policy approach, with minor adjustments". It made two. The rule can now apply to parts of policies rather than whole ones, and inconsistency is judged on "material differences as opposed to being inconsistent 'in any way'".
What the response does not do is mention plans examined under the old system at all. It gives no reasoning for denying the paragraph 2 exception to a plan the government itself required to be examined under December 2024.
Why councils are doing it anyway.
On its face the choice makes little sense. A council finishing a plan under the old system knows the plan will be examined against a superseded framework and adopted without the protection a new-system plan gets. The reason it does so anyway is the five year housing land supply, and it sits in one sentence of Annex D.
"This should be sufficient to provide a minimum of five years' worth of housing, assessed against their housing requirement in the development plan, or against their local housing need (calculated using the standard method) where the development plan housing requirement is more than five years old."
That is paragraph 8. A council whose plan is more than five years old measures its supply against the government's standard method figure. A council with a newly adopted plan measures it against the requirement in that plan. The difference can be enormous.
Cotswold District shows how enormous. Its current plan was adopted in 2018, so today its supply is measured against a local housing need of 1,054 homes a year. On that basis it had 1.8 years of supply, a shortfall of around 3,493 homes, when the inspector decided the Wern appeal in June. The new plan sets a stepped requirement of 420 homes a year for its first five years, rising to 1,030 and then 1,525. Measured against that, the council's own topic paper projects 4.6 years at adoption, using a 20% buffer. Applied with the standard 5% buffer, the same figures give just over 5 years.
The Housing Delivery Test can move the same way. The test's rule book, unchanged in its 2026 edition, lets a council ask for past results to be recalculated against a newly adopted requirement from the start of its plan period. Sheffield's council set this out to its inspectors on 2 September 2026, expecting it to lift a 2025 score of 58%.
Those are the two conditions that open policy S5(1)(j), the route by which speculative housing outside settlements gets approved. Annex A paragraph 2 weakens the words of an old-system plan. It does not touch its numbers. A council adopting a stepped requirement is trading some of the force of its policies for a supply figure that closes the door S5(1)(j) opens. For a district that has been losing appeals on land supply since December 2024, that is the better half of the bargain.
The alternative is slower. The government's rollout guidance is explicit that a council cannot carry its work across: "you cannot carry out a regulation 18 statutory consultation under the existing system and move directly to publishing your Gateway 1 self-assessment under the new system". A council that misses 31 December starts again with a notice of intention, publishes its Gateway 1 self-assessment by 30 April 2027 at the latest, and then runs a 30-month timetable. A council that used the full time allowed would adopt a new-system plan in late 2029, with supply measured against the full standard method figure until then.
The new system also changes who sets the number. Under policy HO2 of the August 2026 framework, where a spatial development strategy is in place it establishes each council's housing requirement, and that figure "should not be retested as part of local plan preparation" without a significant change in circumstances. Cotswold's evidence refers to a forthcoming strategy that will include Gloucestershire. The new framework is also silent on stepped requirements. The guidance that allows them predates it, and the guidance for the new system has not been published.
None of this makes the old-system route safe. It makes it the lesser risk, on the evidence a council has in front of it today.
Where the conflict will fall.
New-system plans are built to avoid the problem. Policy PM6 tells plan makers not to "include policies which duplicate, substantively restate or are inconsistent with the content of national decision-making policies", and PM15 makes that a test of soundness. Legacy plans were never held to that discipline. They were written, as they had to be, to the December 2024 framework, which set out no such split.
The exposure is therefore predictable. It sits wherever the national decision-making policies now say something specific and a typical local plan says something different.
The largest is the countryside. Policy S5 of the August 2026 framework lists ten forms of development outside settlements that "should be approved" unless the benefits are substantially outweighed. They include the reuse of buildings, limited infilling within groups of houses, rural exception sites, housing near well-connected stations, allocated land, and, under S5(1)(j), housing that addresses an evidenced unmet need where the site is "physically well-related to an existing settlement" and of a scale the infrastructure can take. A local policy that allows only allocated sites outside development boundaries says something narrower.
There are smaller seams. Policy L3 says development within settlements "should contribute to an increase in the density of the area in which they are situated". Policy HO8 requires "a flexible approach" to market housing mix where affordable housing is policy compliant. Policy N4 asks for "substantial weight" on the natural beauty of National Landscapes, where December 2024 said "great weight". Policy N2(3) goes furthest, telling decision makers outright not to give weight to local biodiversity policies that go beyond the statutory framework.
The five-year shield, and who can hold it.
The framework offers one other protection. Annex A paragraph 3 says that for five years after adoption, a local housing need figure above the adopted requirement "should not be considered as evidence of unmet need" under S5(1)(j). The shield has two conditions. The council must be able to demonstrate a five year supply of deliverable housing sites, and its Housing Delivery Test must show delivery above 75%.
The Housing Delivery Test results for 2025 were published on 17 August, the same day as the framework. Of the 82 funded councils, 80 have a result.
A score below 75% does more than deny the shield. Under Annex D paragraph 12 it means "an evidenced unmet need for housing is deemed to exist for the purpose of applying policy S5(1)(j)". That applies from the day after publication, not from adoption. The lowest scores among the funded councils are Southend on 20%, Basildon and Eastbourne on 23%, Gosport and Sevenoaks on 25%, and Thurrock on 29%.
The test can move. Once a plan is adopted, the rule book lets a council ask for its new requirement to be applied from the start of the plan period, and a council with a low stepped requirement may climb above 75% quickly. But the shield is measured at the time of each decision, and for many of these councils the first years after adoption are exactly when neither condition is met.
The Cotswolds, worked through.
Cotswold District is one of the 82. Its plan runs to 2043, provides for 18,877 homes against a requirement of 17,918, and is expected to be adopted in early 2028. Set its policies beside the national decision-making policies and the seams are visible in its own text.
Core Policy 4 says development outside development boundaries "will only be permitted where it is allocated by the Local Plan or has been allocated within a Made Neighbourhood Development Plan". National policy S5 lists ten categories that should be approved outside settlements. The allocation-only wording is the part of the plan most exposed to paragraph 2. The plan's supporting text softens it, noting that development can come forward outside boundaries "where consistent with the relevant exception or national policies".
Development Policy 5 allows a replacement dwelling that is "not materially larger" than the one it replaces. National policy S5(1)(c) allows one "not disproportionately larger". Development Policy 7 bars converting a rural building to a home within 10 years of its completion or first use, a restriction the national policy on reuse of buildings does not contain. Core Policy 41 requires housing mix to reflect a table of dwelling sizes. HO8 asks for flexibility on market mix. Core Policy 62 gives the National Landscape "great weight". N4 says "substantial".
Some of these differences will be argued to be material and some will not. Nobody can say in advance, because the framework does not say what material means.
The five-year shield is out of reach at adoption on the council's own figures. Its Housing Land Supply topic paper projects 4.6 years of supply at 1 April 2028, and Table 7 of the same paper does not show five years until 2029/30. The 2025 Housing Delivery Test gave Cotswold 68%.
Neither the plan nor the council's consultation questions and answers mentions the August 2026 framework. The plan's answer to changing national policy, at paragraph 1.18, is that new plans will follow local government reorganisation in April 2028. On 7 September the government paused that reorganisation for review.
What limits the damage.
The exposure is real but it has edges, and they are worth stating as clearly as the problem.
Paragraph 2 itself says other policies "should not be given reduced weight simply because they were adopted prior to the publication of this Framework". Only the materially inconsistent parts are affected. Section 38(6) still makes the development plan the starting point.
Allocations are the safest part of any plan. The framework's glossary defines a settlement to include land that is allocated, so an allocated site is treated as inside the settlement, and S5(1)(i) supports allocated land even where it lies outside. The homes a plan allocates are not what paragraph 2 puts at risk. The protections around them are.
And national policy is not permissive everywhere. S5 is itself a closed list, with anything outside it approvable only in "exceptional circumstances". N4(2) says major development in a National Landscape "should be refused other than in exceptional circumstances". In a district where 80% of the land is National Landscape, much of the protective effect of a weakened local policy survives through national policy instead.
How long this lasts.
Longer than most people will expect. The Planning Inspectorate's median examination time for strategic plans in 2025/26 was 19.4 months. A plan submitted in December 2026 at that pace is adopted in 2028. The transitional regulations then give the council 4 years and 8 months from adoption to give notice that it is starting a new-system plan, and until the plan is 5 years old to publish its first gateway assessment. A new-system replacement for a plan adopted in 2028 is unlikely much before the middle of the 2030s.
For that whole period, every contested application in these districts will begin with an argument the plan-led system was meant to settle: which parts of the adopted plan still count. The government was told that would mean more litigation. It will also mean more appeals decided on national policy rather than local.
What can still be done.
At examination, inspectors can recommend modifications that bring legacy policies closer to the new national wording. There is a precedent. In September the inspector examining Horsham's plan, under the 2023 framework, suggested a policy should say "take advantage of opportunities to reuse existing structures and materials" because it was "an expression from Policy CC2 (1) (d) of the 2026 NPPF". A representation that identifies a local policy at odds with a national decision-making policy, and proposes wording that closes the gap, is asking for exactly that.
The other route runs through the parish. Annex A paragraph 6 says neighbourhood plans not submitted by 17 August 2026 "must comply with this Framework". A neighbourhood plan made under it is a plan "made against this Framework", which is the one exception paragraph 2 allows. Under policy S6, a neighbourhood plan less than 5 years old that allocates sites to meet its housing requirement also carries its own protection against conflicting housing proposals. In districts whose local plan arrives already weakened, the only local policy guaranteed full weight may be the one a parish writes.
Sources: MHCLG, Funding to support Local Plan implementation: successful local planning authorities, 18 May 2026, and Legacy System Plan Funding, 14 January 2026; MHCLG, Rollout of the new local plan-making system, updated 6 March 2026; Planning Inspectorate, Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26; letter from the Minister for Housing and Planning to the Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate, 15 July 2026; National Planning Policy Framework, August 2026, Introduction paragraph 5, Annex A paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8, policies S5, S6, L3, HO8, N2, N4 and PM6, PM15, Annex B and Annex D paragraph 12; National Planning Policy Framework, December 2024, paragraph 232 and Annex 1; National Planning Policy Framework consultation: government response, August 2026, question 192; Housing Delivery Test: 2025 measurement, 17 August 2026; Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 and transitional provisions; Horsham District Local Plan examination, inspector's notes, September 2026; South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse Joint Local Plan examination, post-hearing letter ID28, 15 September 2026; Cotswold District Local Plan 2026-2043, Regulation 19 version, August 2026, paragraph 1.18, Core Policies 4, 41, 62 and Development Policies 5 and 7; Cotswold District Housing Land Supply and Stepped Requirement Topic Paper, July 2026, Tables 5, 6 and 7; National Planning Policy Framework, August 2026, Annex D paragraph 8 and policy HO2; appeal decision ref 6002824, land north of The Wern, Lechlade, 15 June 2026; Housing Delivery Test Measurement Rule Book 2026, paragraphs 16 to 18, as set out in Sheffield Local Plan examination document EXAM 218, 2 September 2026; Cotswold District Council, Statement on Effective Cooperation, July 2026; MHCLG, review of local government reorganisation, 7 September 2026.