27,000 homes, one last consultation. Huntingdonshire's Local Plan goes to the Planning Inspectorate in December.

Huntingdonshire District Council's Pre-Submission Local Plan to 2046 opened for public comment on 16 September 2026, and the window closes at 11:59pm on Wednesday 28 October. The plan sets out where more than 27,000 new homes could be built across the district by 2046, up from the 24,000 figure in the draft version debated earlier this year. This is the last formal chance to challenge the plan before the council submits it to the Planning Inspectorate by 31 December 2026.

What's happening, and by when?

Full council approved the Pre-Submission version of the Local Plan on 9 September 2026, clearing the way for the statutorily required six-week consultation now under way. This stage, known as Regulation 19, works differently to the earlier rounds of engagement: it asks specifically whether the plan is legally compliant and meets the tests of "soundness", rather than inviting a general view on whether residents like it. Every comment submitted is registered and passed to the Planning Inspectorate, where it will inform an independent Inspector's examination of the plan once the council submits it, on a nationally set deadline of 31 December 2026.

Which parts of the patch does it touch?

The plan is districtwide, but the biggest confirmed numbers sit in two places. The Huntingdon spatial area, covering Huntingdon, Brampton and Godmanchester, carries the largest share of allocated sites. Alongside it, the Alconbury Weald strategic expansion continues to grow out its master plan on the former RAF airbase, and The Lattenburys, the two new villages recognised in the plan east of Godmanchester and south of the Hemingfords, account for around 3,800 of the total on their own.

Every parish in the district sits inside the plan's area in a formal sense, but that is not the same as every village carrying a named site. For the rest of the patch, from Kimbolton in the west to the fenland-edge villages in the north-east, this consultation is worth watching for the policy map rather than assuming direct impact; nothing in the sources for this piece points to a comparable site allocation in those areas.

Why has the plan drawn pushback?

A coalition of parish councils and residents' groups, organised under the banner Pause the Plan, has argued for months that the evidence base, particularly around sewage and wider infrastructure capacity, should be settled before the plan moves forward. That followed on from the council's own vote in August to order an infrastructure evidence report on the plan. A survey run by the North Huntingdon & St Ives Cumulative Impacts Group, with more than 1,000 responses, found over 90% of respondents did not trust the plan's evidence, and 93% said it should not be finalised until clearer evidence was available.

The council pressed ahead regardless at the 9 September meeting. The practical reason is timing rather than indifference: Huntingdonshire's housing land supply already sits below the five-year minimum planners look for, and a further delay risks the district losing control over where new homes go, since a stalled Local Plan tends to make individual planning applications harder to resist on appeal even where the council would rather they went elsewhere.

What should you do before 28 October?

The council's Local Plan Update pages carry the full Pre-Submission document, the accompanying policy map and the online form for representations. Because this stage tests legal compliance and soundness specifically, a representation that simply objects to the principle of new homes is unlikely to carry weight with the Inspector; one that points to a specific, evidenced problem with a site or policy is what the process is designed to capture.

If you are buying or selling near Huntingdon, Brampton, Godmanchester or Alconbury Weald, it is worth checking the policy map for your own street before you complete, since a neighbouring field allocated for housing can change how a property shows in years to come, for better or worse. Our Huntingdon estate agents team can talk you through what a specific allocation near you is likely to mean in practice. And if you simply want a sense of where your own property sits today, a free valuation is a good place to start, plan or no plan.