The Planning Data (England) Regulations 2026 were made on 16 April 2026, laid before Parliament later the same day, and will come into force on 7 May 2026. Signed by Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the instrument is made under sections 84(1) and 86(1) of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. In legal terms, the Regulations are narrow but important. They identify specific categories of information that now count as planning data and bring them within the statutory system for approved data standards. The instrument extends to England and Wales, but it applies in England only.
Schedule 1 covers local plan timetables. Under the Regulations, a local plan timetable is planning data for the purposes of section 84 of the 2023 Act. That matters because local planning authorities must now comply with any approved data standards that apply when publishing a local plan timetable under section 15B(8) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Schedule 2 applies the same approach to minerals and waste plan timetables. Minerals and waste planning authorities are placed under an equivalent duty to use approved standards when publishing those timetables. The immediate effect is to move timetable publication away from a purely documentary exercise and into a more standardised data regime.
Schedule 3 introduces a further category: housing requirement data. The Regulations define this as the minimum number of homes that a local plan expects to be provided during the life of the plan. That dataset is treated as planning data for the purposes of both sections 84 and 86 of the 2023 Act. This part of the instrument goes beyond classification alone. It places a direct duty on local planning authorities to publish housing requirement data on their websites and to do so in line with any approved data standards that apply at the time. For plan-making authorities, that creates a clear publication rule attached to a key housing figure in the local plan process.
The timing of that duty is set out with precision. According to Schedule 3, housing requirement data must be published on the day an authority publishes a consultation under regulation 27(1) of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026, on the day it provides documents and information to the Secretary of State under section 15D(1) of the 2004 Act, on the day it complies with section 15D(13), and on the day it complies with regulation 39(1)(a)(i) of the 2026 local planning regulations. Those are not incidental moments in the plan process. They are statutory checkpoints at which the housing figure is expected to be visible as planning data rather than buried within supporting material. The drafting therefore gives that figure repeated public exposure as a plan moves through consultation, submission and later procedural stages.
The explanatory note published with the instrument states that the purpose of the Regulations is to specify categories of planning data and require relevant planning authorities to comply with approved planning data standards when processing that data. The Secretary of State publishes those standards from time to time on gov.uk guidance. Informal printed copies are also available for inspection at the Planning Directorate in Marsham Street. The Government also states that no separate Regulatory Impact Assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, effect on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Instead, readers are directed to the impact assessment prepared for the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, alongside the explanatory memorandum published with this statutory instrument.
For planning authorities, the change is administrative but not minor. Authorities will need publication systems, website processes and internal plan-making workflows that can produce the required datasets in the approved format from 7 May 2026. Any authority approaching a regulation 27 consultation or a section 15D submission stage will need to ensure that the housing requirement figure is ready for publication as structured planning data on the relevant day. For those outside local government, the benefit is clearer visibility. Standardised timetable data should make it easier to see where a local plan or a minerals and waste plan sits in the statutory process. Standardised housing requirement data should also make it easier for inspectors, applicants, residents and policy teams to identify the figure being advanced in a plan and to follow it through later stages.
The wider significance lies in how the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 is now being put into operation. The Act created the legal basis for planning data standards, and the Planning Data (England) Regulations 2026 begin to attach that system to specific plan-making datasets with defined publication duties. From 7 May 2026, English planning authorities will face a more explicit statutory rule on what must be published, when it must be published and the standards it must meet. For a planning system often criticised for uneven document formats and hard-to-track plan progress, that is a notable shift towards a more consistent public record.