Published: Tuesday, 6th October 2026
The borough council’s ‘scoping’ consultation on future development plans has had a huge response from people in West Norfolk.
During the consultation, the council received more than 300 responses to the online survey, spoke with nearly 300 people in person, received more than 450 emails and had more than 1,500 comments on an interactive site map.
Cllr Jim Moriarty, Cabinet Member for Planning and Licensing, said:
“This is a phenomenal response and I would like to thank every person who took the time to engage with us, as well as the officer team who went to great lengths to give people the opportunity to take part.
We were keen to hear from people about their priorities for development, and ideas for where development should be located. We have learned a great deal from people’s feedback and with such a significant response as this, we feel really confident that a good range of local views have been heard.
We can now use these views as part of the evidence base for drafting our plan.”
The scoping consultation is only the first stage in making a new Local Plan for West Norfolk that should last for around 15 years once adopted.
The main aims were finding out people’s priorities for development, and understanding more about how people would like to be consulted.
The council also took the opportunity to ask people what they thought of sites that landowners had already suggested could be suitable for development, and invite landowners to consider if there were any more sites that they wished to nominate.
With the combined results of earlier site suggestions and further sites put forward during the scoping consultation, a total of more than 800 possible sites have been identified.
These will be carefully screened and assessed, and considered alongside a range of planning evidence and the views expressed during the scoping consultation.
From this, a draft plan will be compiled and this will be subject to a full consultation in 2027 – it is at this stage that people will be able to comment on sites actually being proposed for inclusion in the plan. The draft plan will be reviewed and a final consultation will take place before the plan is checked by independent inspectors and put to councillors for adoption.