Basingstoke Local Plan Delayed to 2029 Over Water Supply

Basingstoke and Deane is about to abandon the Local Plan it has spent years writing and start again under a new government system. Adoption moves from 2027 to 22 September 2029, and the council’s own report says that leaves the borough exposed to speculative housing schemes “for at least three more years”.

Cabinet is asked to approve the switch on Tuesday 8 September. The report, Local Plan: Next Steps, was published last week along with the new timetable.

The reason is water. South East Water has not finished the technical work the council needs, and without it the plan cannot be shown to be deliverable.

What the report actually says

The current published timetable would have seen a final draft consulted on in summer 2026 and the plan submitted to the Secretary of State by 31 December 2026. That is the last date any council can submit under the old planning rules. The report says plainly that this is “no longer achievable”.

Three things collided:

• Water supply. South East Water, the Environment Agency and Natural England all raised concerns in the last consultation about the resilience of drinking water supply.
• A new planning system. The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 came into force on 25 March 2026, and a restructured National Planning Policy Framework followed in August 2026.
• Local government reorganisation. Basingstoke and Deane is abolished on 1 April 2028 and replaced by a North Hampshire unitary council covering this borough, Hart and Rushmoor.

The council asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to let it use the old deadline more flexibly. The report says that at the time of writing “the Government has not indicated any support for the requested extension”. Cllr Andy Koniezcko, Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning and Infrastructure, writes in his foreword that the council has written to the Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Matthew Pennycook, asking to meet him.

The water problem, in the council’s words

South East Water’s WRZ4-West water resource sub-zone covers nearly two thirds of the borough, including Basingstoke town, plus parts of Hart and East Hampshire. The report says the company’s position is that the growth required in the new plan period to 2042 “cannot currently be accommodated within available and environmentally sustainable water resources”.

The Environment Agency has told the council that abstraction in that zone is adding to environmental pressure, naming the Greywell Fen SSSI and Itchel Brook, a tributary of the River Hart. There is already a supply-demand deficit in the area, and the report warns this “may impact upon the determination of planning applications within the zone”.

The long-term fix identified in South East Water’s own resources plan is a strategic transfer scheme moving water from the Surrey Hills to Fleet. The report says that scheme is “significantly behind its delivery schedule” and is not expected to be running until the early 2030s.

The risk section is blunter than the foreword. It says the council is in this position “due to the lack of action by SEW to provide the infrastructure it had already identified as being needed, that failure to provide has not been enforced by the regulator”.

The new timetable

The dates Cabinet is asked to publish are:

The council says it must restart at the beginning regardless of how far it has already got. The report states that MHCLG has confirmed “all LPAs must begin at the start of the first stage of the process, regardless of their current stage of plan making”. That includes a fresh call for sites.

The scoping consultation this autumn is the next point at which residents can have a say, and it is about the scope of the plan and how people will be engaged, not about individual sites.

Why this matters if you do not read planning reports

The blunt consequence is set out in the report itself. The council cannot currently demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites, and the housing policies in the adopted 2016 Local Plan are out of date.

When that is the case, national policy says housing schemes should be approved unless the harm substantially outweighs the benefit. Planners call it the tilted balance. It is why developers win appeals on sites the council has refused.

The report says moving to the new system means “development management decisions are highly likely to need to be determined in the context of a lack of a five-year supply until 2029”. It adds that the updated Framework introduces “a more permissive approach to development”, including a focus on building around train stations.

That is not theoretical here. Six major appeals have already been allowed against the council in the current government monitoring period, including 130 homes at Sapley Lane in Overton and 44 off West Ham Lane in Basingstoke. We have covered that separately in the council’s own report on its appeal record.

The council has formally written to Government asking for “a bespoke approach to the determination of planning applications” that would protect the borough from speculative development while the water issue is unresolved. There is no answer yet.

The North Hampshire problem

The plan Cabinet is being asked to start will not be submitted before the council that started it ceases to exist.

Basingstoke and Deane approached Hart and Rushmoor about writing a single North Hampshire plan. The report says the council supports the idea. Both neighbours said no for now. Each has already published its own notice of intent, completed a scoping consultation, and is aiming to reach submission by vesting day on 1 April 2028.

That leaves risks the report lists openly:

• the new North Hampshire Council may decide not to adopt the borough’s plan at all
• work may be duplicated and have to be redone at unitary level
• money may be spent on evidence that is later superseded
• the three plans may end up misaligned with each other

There is a further layer above all of it. The 2026 regulations create Spatial Development Strategies at regional level, which for this area will be produced by the Hampshire and Solent Combined County Authority and can redistribute housing numbers across the region. All three local plans will have to align with it.

What it means for you

If you objected to the draft plan, your objection has not been lost, but it has not been answered either. Around 5,000 representations were submitted to the consultation that ran from November 2025 to January 2026. Officers say they are still working through them and that the spatial strategy may change as a result. That work now feeds into a plan that will not be adopted for three years.

If a developer applies to build near you, the council is in a weaker position than it would like to be, and will stay there until 2029. The absence of a five-year land supply is the single biggest factor in how these applications are decided, and nothing in this report changes it.

The next chance to have a say is the scoping consultation, 9 October to 20 November 2026. It is a narrow one, about process and scope rather than sites, but it is the door into the new plan. The bigger moments are the consultations in summer 2027 and summer 2028.

Cabinet meets at 6.30pm on Tuesday 8 September in the Council Chamber at the Civic Offices, London Road. Cabinet meetings are open to the public, and the full agenda and reports pack are published in advance.

More on planning locally: our Basingstoke planning news page tracks live applications, and there is background on house prices and council tax bands.