In United Kingdom planning law, a unitary development plan (UDP) is a development plan prepared by a metropolitan district,

London Borough The London boroughs are the 32 local authority districts that together with the City of London make up the administrative area of Greater London; each is governed by a London borough council. The present London boroughs were all created at ...

or some unitary local authorities.

Background

UDPs contains policies equivalent to those in both a structure plan and a local plan. UDPs were introduced by the

Local Government Act 1985 The Local Government Act 1985 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Its main effect was to abolish the six county councils of the metropolitan counties that had been set up in 1974, 11 years earlier, by the Local Government Act 1972 ...

and were produced up to around 2004, when the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 replaced them with Local Plans. By virtue of specific transitional provisions, some plans are still in effect as of 2020. The unitary development plan was used at all stages of production and is reliant on criteria-based policies. Often contentious sites are proposed, which may generate significant opposition to the proposal. The existing system of UDPs makes it very difficult to provide a clearer framework.

Purpose

An example statement describing the purpose of a UDP from

Salford City Council Salford City Council is the local authority of the City of Salford in Greater Manchester, England. It is a metropolitan borough council, one of ten in Greater Manchester and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of England, and provides the maj ...

The unitary development plan (UDP) is a statutory document that sets out the council's planning policies that will be used to guide development, conservation, regeneration and environmental improvement activity in Salford.

References

Housing in the United Kingdom United Kingdom planning policy {{UK-planning-stub