Bury's Local Plan proposes 9,486 homes to 2043 and consultation closes 11 September. The borough has 4.1 years of supply and five Green Belt sites allocated.

Bury is running a Local Plan consultation right now, and it closes at 11.59pm on 11 September 2026. The Publication Local Plan was approved by Cabinet on 30 June 2026 and published for comment on 17 July. If you have something to say about where the borough builds for the next seventeen years, this is the window.

It is also the point at which most people discover the thing that makes Bury’s planning system confusing: the big housing sites are not in this plan. They were settled two years ago, in a different document, and the Local Plan explicitly says comments on them cannot be considered through this process.

Two plans, not one

Places for Everyone is the joint development plan covering nine of the ten Greater Manchester boroughs. Bury Council resolved to adopt it on 20 March 2024 and it took effect across all nine authorities on 21 March 2024, running to 2039. It sets the strategic housing numbers and it allocates the large sites, all of them released from the Green Belt.

The Bury Local Plan is the borough’s own plan, sitting on top of that. It covers everything Places for Everyone does not: the detailed policies on affordable housing, design, employment land and town centres, plus the smaller site allocations. When adopted it will finally replace the saved policies of the Bury Unitary Development Plan of August 1997, which is the document the council has been running on for nearly thirty years.

The timetable, from the council’s Local Development Scheme of March 2026, is submission in November 2026, examination in public in April 2027 and adoption in November 2027, with the last two subject to the Planning Inspectorate.

The numbers in the new plan

Places for Everyone requires Bury to plan for 7,678 homes between 2022 and 2039, an average of 452 a year. The requirement is stepped: 246 a year to 2025, 452 a year to 2030, then 520 a year from 2030 to 2039. The Local Plan extends the 452 rate through to 2043, which gives a total requirement of 9,486 homes over 2022 to 2043.

Worth noting for context: the government’s standard method put Bury’s local housing need at 10,047 homes, or 591 a year. The Places for Everyone figure is 76% of that, a discount the plan justifies on land constraints.

Against the 9,486 requirement the council identifies a supply of 11,246 homes, a flexibility allowance of 18.6%. That supply breaks down as 836 already completed between 2022 and 2025, 2,084 under construction or permitted, 5,279 from the Places for Everyone allocations, 2,135 on other town centre sites, 570 on other sites and 342 from small-site windfall.

On affordable housing, Policy LP-H4 proposes 10% on schemes of 10 to 24 homes, 15% in the Bury, Radcliffe and Prestwich town centres on schemes of 25 or more, 25% elsewhere, and 50% on Green Belt sites of ten homes or more. Two Regeneration Opportunity Areas are designated, east of Bury town centre and at Milltown Street in Radcliffe.

Where the homes are supposed to go

Places for Everyone housing allocations in Bury borough Horizontal bar chart of five allocations totalling 6,440 homes. Elton Reservoir 3,500, Simister and Bowlee 1,350 in Bury, Walshaw 1,250, Heywood and Pilsworth 200 in Bury, and Seedfield 140. All five are releases from the Green Belt. Only 670 of the 6,440 are expected to be built within the next five years. 6,440 homes on five Green Belt sites Places for Everyone allocations in Bury borough, adopted March 2024. Source: Bury Publication Local Plan, June 2026. Elton Reservoir (JPA7) 3,500 Simister and Bowlee (JPA1.2) 1,350 in Bury Walshaw (JPA9) 1,250 Heywood and Pilsworth (JPA1.1) 200 in Bury, plus 591,000 sqm of industry Seedfield (JPA8) 140 Only 670 of these 6,440 homes are expected to be completed within the next five years. The council's own supply statement puts first completions at Elton Reservoir in 2027/28 and at Walshaw and Simister Bowlee in 2028/29. That gap is why Bury cannot currently demonstrate a five-year housing land supply.

All five allocations are releases from the Green Belt. Across the borough, Places for Everyone takes 572 hectares out of the Green Belt, more than 330 of them at the Northern Gateway, and leaves 53.8% of Bury still designated. Three small areas were added to the Green Belt in compensation: Pigs Lea Brook, Woolfold and Chesham.

Elton Reservoir is the one that will change the borough most. Its development framework was adopted on 30 June 2026, after consultation from 13 February to 27 March. It sets out 3,500 homes with affordable housing at the policy level, currently 25% or around 875 homes, a two-form entry primary school expandable to three forms, three local centres, a new Metrolink stop and public transport hub, a link road through the site, a nature park and a heritage park. The framework was prepared by the council with technical input from Peel Land and Property, the main site promoter. No outline application has been submitted.

The Walshaw and Simister Bowlee frameworks were adopted on the same day. The Northern Gateway framework was adopted in April 2025.

Why the council keeps losing appeals

Bury cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply. Its most recent published position, in the statement of November 2025 covering April 2025 to March 2030, is 4.1 years, or 4.3 if the over-delivery allowance from 2022 to 2025 is applied. The council identifies 2,231 homes against a requirement of 2,712 including the 20% buffer.

The buffer is there because Bury failed the government’s Housing Delivery Test. The 2023 measurement, published in December 2024 and still the most recent, scored Bury at 64%: 798 homes delivered against 1,237 required over three years. The consequence recorded by government is “Presumption”, meaning the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies to planning decisions in the borough.

Actual net completions have been 280 in 2022/23, 244 in 2023/24 and 312 in 2024/25. The monitoring report for 2024/25 records 88 affordable homes, 27% of completions, and zero employment floorspace completed, with a net loss of 302 square metres.

Put those figures next to the 520-a-year requirement arriving in 2030 and the shape of the problem is clear: the allocated sites are years from first completion, and the borough is delivering around three fifths of what it needs in the meantime.

The applications to watch

Two large housing schemes entered the pipeline in the summer of 2026, both on the north side of Bury and both requiring environmental impact assessment.

  • Land at Starling Road, Bury, ref 73209. Outline application for 390 dwellings. The council issued an EIA screening opinion of “EIA required” on 16 June 2026.
  • Land east of Walmersley Road, Bury BL9 5JX, ref 73354. Up to 350 dwellings including 50% affordable housing, plus employment and commercial floorspace, a local retail centre, a mobility hub and public open space. Scoping opinion requested 18 June 2026, “EIA required” issued 20 July 2026. The 50% affordable figure is the Local Plan’s Green Belt threshold, which tells you where the site is.

Two much larger applications have been sitting undetermined for over a year.

  • Land off Church Street and Scobell Street, Tottington, ref 71645. Outline for up to 275 homes on part of the Walshaw allocation. Validated 15 April 2025, still registered and undetermined.
  • Northern Gateway, ref 71867. Outline for a national-scale employment development of storage and distribution, industrial and manufacturing uses including data centres, with an ancillary hotel, on land between Pilsworth Road and the M62 corridor. Validated 25 April 2025, still undetermined. This is the biggest undetermined application in the borough by a distance.

The full register is at planning.bury.gov.uk. Planning Control Committee next meets on 1 September and 22 September 2026.

HMOs now need planning permission

On 16 July 2026 the council adopted a supplementary planning document on houses in multiple occupation and made an immediate borough-wide Article 4 Direction removing permitted development rights for the conversion of a family home into a small HMO for up to six people. In plain terms, you now need planning permission for any new HMO anywhere in Bury.

The policy tests include a 10% concentration threshold within a 100 metre radius, a ban on sandwiching a family home between two HMOs, and a ban on three or more adjacent HMOs. Consultation on confirming the direction ran from 16 July to 27 August 2026.

The regeneration schemes

Prestwich Village. The £100m-plus redevelopment of the Longfield Centre, a joint venture between Bury Council and Muse, was approved with conditions on 26 September 2024 under reference 70449. Phase 1A, a £14m travel hub funded through the Greater Manchester transport settlement, is on site with practical completion due in summer 2026; Cabinet approved an extra £153,009 for it on 8 July 2026. A demolition contractor, DSM Demolition, was appointed in March 2026 at £537,437 excluding VAT. Phase 2 is 248 homes.

Radcliffe Hub. The £40m civic building on Blackburn Street, funded by £20m from government, more than £20m of council capital and £2.5m from Sport England, is in fit-out. It will hold a 25 metre six-lane pool, a learner pool, a 100-station gym, Clip’n Climb walls, a rooftop activity space and a new two-floor library. The council has not published an opening date, and Radcliffe Leisure Centre stays shut until it does.

Bury Market and Casewells. The £33m market rebuild is nearly finished. The new outdoor canopies are complete and the events hall, named Casewells, is being fitted out by Midlands Events under a 15-year lease agreed in February 2026, with a council loan of up to £1.1m towards the fit-out. Twelve food and retail units, a central bar and a stage, open a minimum of six days a week, targeted at autumn 2026. New images were released on 3 August 2026.

Bury Interchange. An £81m rebuild, £45m from the current transport settlement and £36m after 2027, intended to be Greater Manchester’s first operationally carbon-neutral interchange. Phase 1, a new footbridge and platform works, was permitted in July 2025 under reference 71834; £25.1m was released in June 2026 and the construction contract was due to be awarded in summer 2026. Phase 2 adds housing on an affordable rental tenure.

Pyramid Park. A 7.4-acre council-owned brownfield site on the edge of the town centre, with a £1.73m government grant for remediation. Conlon Construction was appointed in July 2026 on a contract of up to £1,554,000, with works running to autumn 2026. Under the grant agreement the site must be sold to a private developer by 31 March 2027.

Mill Gate. The council has adopted a regeneration framework and says it will form a joint venture with Bruntwood over the 15-acre centre. No planning application has been submitted.

How to comment on the Local Plan

The Publication Local Plan, the policies map and the consultation details are on the council’s Bury Local Plan page. Representations close at 23.59 on 11 September 2026. At this stage the Inspectorate is testing whether the plan is legally compliant and sound, so comments that address soundness carry more weight than general objection.

A separate 12-week consultation on a new draft Housing Strategy, replacing the 2021 to 2025 version, was approved by Cabinet on 30 June 2026.

Where these figures come from

Checked on 9 August 2026. What gets built near you affects what your home is worth, and the Elton Reservoir Metrolink stop, if it happens, would be the first addition to the Bury tram line since it opened.