Guidance for Programme Officers: local plan examinations

Publication Year

2025

Document Status

Current

Abstract

Provides practical guidance on the role and responsibilities of a Programme Officer (PO) during local plan examinations. Covers: qualities of an effective PO; the PO and the inspector; overview of the examination and the role of the PO; and role/key tasks at each stage of the examination.

Document History

Last updated: 27 November 2025 - Added information about the new plan-making system. Sourced from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-programme-officers-local-plan-examinations/guidance-for-programme-officers-local-plan-examinations and converted to pdf. Whilst we endeavour to capture all updates it is subject to receiving alerts from the publisher and there may be formatting or punctuation changes applied to the html version that do not affect the text. Document type: guidance. First published: 2 April 2019.

Publisher Information