Hillingdon Local Plan: have your say by 5pm Friday 21 August

Residents have until 5pm on Friday 21 August to tell Hillingdon Council what its next Local Plan should contain. The “scoping consultation” opened on 9 July and is the first public stage of a plan that will decide where homes, jobs and infrastructure go across the borough for the next 15 years, and how much of the green belt is left alone. (Scoping consultation, Hillingdon Council)

It closes six days from now, and it is worth understanding what it is and is not. It is not the plan itself. There are no sites, no housing numbers of the council’s own and no draft policies to object to yet. The council is asking two things: what the plan’s “key themes” should be, chapter by chapter, and how residents want to be consulted at the later stages. It says responses made to the 2024 Regulation 18 “Call for Views” and the 2023 and 2024 Call for Sites “will be re-considered as part of this scoping consultation”, so anyone who wrote in then need not repeat themselves. (Scoping consultation, Hillingdon Council)

Why the council is starting again

Hillingdon began updating its Local Plan in 2024, but the consultation document says that programme “was undeliverable due to changes to the planning policy context which are beyond the council’s control”. The government’s new plan-making system, in force since March 2026, sets a 30-month timetable with three rounds of consultation and three “gateways” at which readiness is checked, so the council published a notice of intention on 12 May 2026 and restarted. (Hillingdon Local Plan scoping consultation, June 2026, PDF)

The published timetable runs: scoping consultation to 21 August 2026; Gateway 1 on 17 September 2026; a consultation on the plan’s content and evidence from 5 November 2026 to 14 January 2027; Gateway 2 on 1 March 2027; consultation on the proposed Local Plan from 15 June to 27 August 2027; Gateway 3 on 1 October 2027; submission to the Secretary of State for examination on 1 November 2027; and “consideration of adoption” on 1 May 2028. (Scoping consultation document, section 1)

The numbers the plan will have to answer

The consultation document sets out the pressures in the council’s own figures. Hillingdon’s population rose by 11.7 per cent between the 2011 and 2021 censuses, from just over 273,900 to around 305,900, faster than London (7.7 per cent) or England (6.6 per cent). More than 3,400 households are on the social housing register. The ratio of median earnings to house prices in the borough is 11.95, against 7.8 for England. The current London Plan target is 1,083 homes a year, with a strategic aim of 50 per cent genuinely affordable, and the document warns that the target “is likely to increase significantly when a new London Plan is published”. (Scoping consultation document, section 3)

That new London Plan has now been published in draft, and the council has said what it thinks of it. On 30 July it announced its opposition to the Mayor of London’s draft, which it says proposes 24,030 homes in Hillingdon over ten years, or 2,403 a year, “more than double the borough’s current London Plan target”, with 61 per cent of them on green belt, “the largest green belt allocation proposed for any London borough”. The council says it is “preparing a robust response”. (Council challenges Mayor’s plan over significant threat to Hillingdon’s green belt, Hillingdon Council, 30 July 2026)

The two documents are linked in law: the Local Plan “must be in general conformity with the London Plan”, so whatever housing figure survives the Mayor’s own examination will set the floor for Hillingdon’s. The Mayor’s consultation runs longer than the council’s, closing on Thursday 15 October at consult.london.gov.uk/londonplan. (Scoping consultation document, section 1; Hillingdon Council, 30 July 2026)

Heathrow sits over all of it. The document says the third runway “as currently framed … represents the largest infrastructure project in Europe” and would mean “substantial areas of housing, businesses and local open spaces being lost”, and that the council will take account of the revised Airports National Policy Statement, due for consultation “by summer 2026”, as it writes the plan. (Scoping consultation document, section 1)

The Call for Sites is open too

Alongside the consultation the council has reopened its Call for Sites. Anyone, landowner or not, can put forward land wholly or partly in the borough that is at least 0.25 hectares, or could take 10 or more homes, or 1,000 square metres or more of non-residential floorspace. The two earlier rounds, in 2023 and 2024, drew 80 sites, all of which are carried forward automatically. Submissions “will in time be made public” as part of the evidence base, with contact details removed. (Scoping consultation document, section 15)

The 2024 Call for Views drew 141 responses, summarised in the council’s Regulation 18 consultation statement. (Scoping consultation document, section 1)

What it means for you

• Deadline: 5pm, Friday 21 August. Respond online through the council’s consultation page, by email to localplan@hillingdon.gov.uk, or by post to Planning Policy, Residents Services, Civic Centre, High Street, Uxbridge UB8 1UW. Paper copies are at the Civic Centre (9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday) and at Uxbridge, Botwell Green and Ruislip Manor libraries. (Scoping consultation, Hillingdon Council)
• Your name may be published alongside your response, though not your contact details, and responses may be passed to the Planning Inspectorate for the examination. (Scoping consultation document, section 14)
• The green belt argument is not settled here. Nothing in this stage allocates land. The first sight of the council’s own housing numbers and site options comes in the content and evidence consultation from 5 November, and the draft plan proper in June 2027. If you want to be told when those open, the council asks for your full name and email to localplan@hillingdon.gov.uk. (Scoping consultation document, section 14)
• The Mayor’s draft is the bigger lever on housing numbers, and it is open until 15 October. Objections about the 61 per cent green belt share belong there as much as here.
• Individual applications carry on regardless. An out-of-date plan weakens the council’s hand on them, which the document itself acknowledges: without an up-to-date plan “the council would not be able to place appropriate weight on policies which are out of date”. Our Uxbridge planning news page tracks the applications that come through in the meantime. (Scoping consultation document, section 1)