Gateway 1 self-assessment summary

The gateway 1 self-assessment was published 21 October 2026. Government policy states we should adopt the new plan within 30 months of this date. This helps ensure we have an up-to-date local plan that responds to the needs of the area and our communities. This page explains what we have done to get ready to meet the 30-month timeframe.

We have published a timetable for preparing the plan

The council published its Local Plan timetable on Tuesday 12 May 2026 with an update on Tuesday 29 September 2026. The timetable shows how the council plans to adopt the Local Plan within 30 months.

• Local Plan timetable

The timetable shows when we expect to carry out the different stages and activities for preparing a plan. We will update the timetable throughout the plan-making process.   

We have established project management and governance arrangements 

At the beginning of the Local Plan process we prepared a Project Initiation Document (PID) in line with Planning Advisory Service guidance.  

We established the: 

• scope

• relationship to other plans

• timetable

• governance and decision making

• staff and resourcing

• corporate support needs

• evidence requirements

• stakeholder engagement

• budget

• risk identification and mitigation.

The PID has been kept up to date.

We planned how we will consult  

Public consultation is essential for the local plan to represent the needs of our communities. It must be easy for people to have their say in a way that works for them, so they can influence the way the area develops.  

Previous consultation 

We carried out a scoping consultation over 6 weeks in the summer of 2026 from 9 July to 21 August. The consultation has now closed, but you can sign up for future updates by subscribing at Hillingdon Local Plan - Commonplace or emailing the Local Plan inbox localplan@hillingdon.gov.uk.

The aim of the scoping consultation was to hear people’s views on what the new Local Plan should contain and how we propose to carry out future consultations on the plan. Details on the Scoping Consultation are available online: 

• Hillingdon Local Plan - Commonplace

Proposed consultation activities 

The Local Plan consultation will be hosted on Commonplace for improved usability, consistency and transparency throughout the plan-making period. In line with the adopted Statement of Community Involvement, we will  undertake the actions set out in the table below for future stages of consultation on the Local Plan. 

We began scoping out the content of the plan 

Scoping includes considering how well the existing plan is working and gathering baseline information about the area. This helps to identify our future needs and ambitions. To gain an understanding of the development needs for our area, we have looked at the existing evidence about our area and the people our plan needs to provide for. We have also considered our current local plan and how well it has delivered for our communities and what may need changing.  We have completed key evidence documents for the Local Plan: 

• Hillingdon Townscape and Character Study 2023 (Urban Initiatives) 

• Hillingdon Employment Land and Capacity Study 2023 (Avison Young) 

• West London Town Centre Study 2023 (Urban Foresight) 

• Hillingdon Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2025 (Opinion Research Services).

These documents are available for download from the council’s website: 

• Local Plan Review

We undertook two call for sites exercises and started a Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment. We have consulted with departments across the council to understand what they need the Local Plan to achieve and how the current Local Plan is performing. 

We have also considered other council strategies: 

• Hillingdon Growth Plan

• Uxbridge vision

Using the information we have gathered along with the input from our decision makers, we have: 

• begun to draft a vision for the area

• started to understand the development requirements for Hillingdon. 

We began a Strategic Environmental Assessment  

We are legally required to identify, describe and evaluate any likely significant effects on the environment of:  

• implementing the local plan

• reasonable alternatives considering the objectives and the geographical scope of the plan.

This process will consider how community, national and international environmental protection objectives and any other environmental challenges are considered in the plan. It will help us to predict significant environmental effects and develop ways of preventing, reducing and offsetting these. 

The Local Plan will be subject to Integrated Impact Assessment or IAA, which combines Sustainability Appraisal, Equalities Impact Assessment, Health Impact Assessment and Community Safety Impact Assessment. The IIA process is carried out alongside the plan production process and helps direct the plan toward achieving sustainable development. The first stage of the IIA is the preparation of a scoping report which sets the context, objectives, establishes baseline information, and sets sustainability issues and the appraisal framework. The IIA Scoping Report has been consulted on by statutory consultation bodies. The IIA Scoping Consultation is available for download: 

• Integrated Impact Assessment

How to stay up to date  

To sign-up to the council’s planning policy consultation database, please email localplan@hillingdon.gov.uk 

• Local Plan Review