Mid Devon starts writing the planning rulebook that could shape Crediton to 2046

It doesn’t sound particularly thrilling. Plan Mid Devon is, however, one of those documents that could quietly determine an enormous amount about Crediton’s future.

Where new homes might be built. What parts of the countryside or built environment receive protection. What infrastructure should accompany development. And, fundamentally, what role Crediton is expected to play within the district over the next 20 years.

Mid Devon District Council’s new Local Plan is due to formally start on the 19th October, beginning a tightly prescribed 30-month plan-making process.

So what actually is Plan Mid Devon?

Think of it as the district’s planning rulebook and map rolled into one.

The existing Mid Devon Local Plan was adopted in 2020 and runs to 2033, but the council says many of its policies – including those concerning new homes – are now out of date.

Its replacement is intended to look much further ahead, provisionally covering 2026 to 2046.

The new plan will contain a vision and objectives for Mid Devon, a spatial strategy setting out how development should be distributed, policies used when deciding planning applications and potentially specific allocations of land for development.

For Crediton, that could ultimately mean decisions about housing growth, employment, transport and other infrastructure, environmental protection and the town’s place within the wider community.

In other words, this is the stage at which some of the decisions people complain about years later begin taking shape.

Haven’t they already started?

Sort of.

There has already been an initial scoping consultation, which ran from the 26th May, until the 10th July.

But that was essentially about the scope of the exercise; what the new plan should contain, what issues it should address and how people should be involved.

The formal 30-month preparation period does not start until the 19th October, following what is known as Gateway 1; a council self-assessment intended to confirm that it is ready to complete the plan within the new national timetable.

The more interesting stage for Crediton comes next.

From the 22nd January to the 8th March 2027, MDDC plans to consult on the proposed content of Plan Mid Devon and the evidence behind it.

Its own guidance says that stage will include the emerging vision, aims and objectives, policies and draft site allocations.

That’s the one worth putting in the diary.

Why should Crediton care?

Because once a site appears in an adopted Local Plan, or a policy establishes where development should be directed, that carries significantly more weight than a vague aspiration in a council strategy.

Plan Mid Devon will ultimately become part of the statutory development plan used when MDDC determines planning applications.

Crediton’s own Neighbourhood Plan, formally adopted in 2022, already forms part of that statutory planning framework and will continue to sit alongside the district-wide plan.

So this isn’t a document simply predicting what might happen, it establishes the planning framework within which future proposals will be judged.

That makes seemingly dry questions such as where Crediton sits in the local community, how much development it is expected to accommodate, and which sites are eventually identified rather important.

And there’s a wrinkle

All of this is happening against the backdrop of Devon’s unresolved local-government shake-up.

In July, the Government chose a reorganisation model which would have moved Crediton, Crediton Hamlets and Newton St Cyres out of Mid Devon and into an expanded Exeter authority.

Then, on the 7th September, the Government paused the Devon reorganisation process for review.

Meanwhile, Mid Devon’s currently published planning timetable still says preparation of Plan Mid Devon begins on the 19th October.

So, for now at least, MDDC is proceeding with a 20-year planning document covering its existing planning area while the future shape of the council itself remains unsettled.

Planning seldom lacks complications.

Thirty months to get it done

The speed of the process is not entirely Mid Devon’s choice.

A new national Local Plan system came into force in March, designed around a 30-month preparation timetable. MDDC has therefore had to formally restart work it had already begun under the previous system.

The current timetable looks like this:

19th October 2026 – formal commencement / Gateway 1
22nd January – 8th March 2027 – consultation on plan content and evidence
1st November 2027 – Gateway 2
21st January – 20th March 2028 – consultation on the proposed Local Plan
3rd July 2028 – Gateway 3
4th September 2028 – submission for independent examination
1st April 2029 – proposed adoption

Those dates will be reviewed as the process develops, but they show just how quickly the big choices will begin moving from broad ideas to an actual planning document.

The important bit for Crediton

There will be plenty of opportunities over the next couple of years to discover what the finished Plan Mid Devon says.

The more useful opportunity is considerably earlier: before the important bits become settled policy.

For Crediton, the first date to watch is therefore not April 2029.

It’s the 22nd January 2027.

That is when the next consultation is scheduled to open, and when we should begin getting a much clearer idea of what Mid Devon thinks Crediton’s next twenty years should actually look like.