Aylesbury planning: 9 of 10 new settlements are in the vale

Buckinghamshire Council has to plan for 91,287 new homes between 2024 and 2045. Its draft Local Plan chooses ten locations for strategic growth, new and expanded settlements big enough to need their own schools, centres and roads. Nine of the ten are in the Aylesbury Vale.

The consultation on that plan closes on Sunday 6 September 2026. It is the last chance to comment before the plan goes to a government inspector, and at this stage comments have to argue that the plan is unlawful or unsound rather than simply that you dislike it.

Everything below is taken from the council’s own draft Local Plan Regulation 19 document, its Local Plan pages and its published local development scheme.

Where the strategic growth goes

Why the growth lands here

The council does not set the number. 91,230 homes is what the government’s standard method calculates as Buckinghamshire’s need, at 4,344 a year, and the plan makes provision for 91,287. The council’s own description is that this is “significantly higher than under previous national calculations”.

What the council does choose is where the homes go, and two decisions push almost all of the strategic growth north.

The first is that the plan allocates no new housing or employment in the Green Belt, which the council describes as one of the strongest priorities residents raised. Buckinghamshire’s Green Belt covers the south of the county, around Beaconsfield, Gerrards Cross, Chalfont St Peter and Iver.

The second is the Chilterns National Landscape, which runs along the escarpment through the middle of the county. Between the two, the parts of Buckinghamshire with the fewest national designations are the vale, the Claydons and the country around Buckingham. That is where the ten strategic sites went, and nine of them are on this side of the county.

The plan also uses a stepped housing requirement: 2,150 homes a year from 2024/25 to 2029/30, then 5,222 a year from 2030/31 to 2044/45. In plain terms, the heavy building is scheduled for the 2030s, after the new settlements have been masterplanned. Whether that is realistic is exactly the sort of thing the inspector will test.

What it means town by town

Aylesbury. The NESS site north of the town is allocated for approximately 9,080 homes in total, of which 3,650 are to be built by 2045, along with fifteen additional serviced Gypsy and Traveller pitches. Separately, the Aylesbury Garden Town allocations carried into the plan add up to another 9,910 homes: South Aylesbury 1,350, land to the south-west 1,400, north of the A41 1,700, south of the A41 3,000 and Kingsbrook at least 2,460. The South Aylesbury site also safeguards the land for the South East Aylesbury Link Road.

Winslow. A town whose new railway station is built but not yet open now finds itself carrying 6,260 homes in the draft plan: 3,650 in the strategic site, 1,500 off Little Horwood Road, 630 west of Furze Lane and 480 in the town centre, the last of which also brings a community library. That is the single biggest proportional change anywhere in the plan.

Haddenham. A strategic extension of at least 6,610 homes, with about 3,545 in the plan period, plus 560 on Aston Road. Haddenham already has the fastest London trains in the district, which is precisely why the plan puts growth there.

Buckingham. A strategic extension of at least 4,700 homes, about 2,235 by 2045, plus Beachampton to the north-east, a wholly new settlement of at least 8,230 homes on the Milton Keynes side, and Turweston with about 2,890. Those three sites together carry 8,325 homes within the plan period, out of 91,287 for the whole county.

Stoke Mandeville and Wing. 1,650 and 1,630 homes respectively, both delivered entirely within the plan period, which makes them the two that will change soonest.

Aylesbury town centre. A separate policy, SP7, covers the town centre, and five site allocations sit inside it: 300 homes on Friarscroft car park, 80 homes and 420 square metres of retail on the Royal Mail delivery office, a mixed-use scheme at The Gateway with 4,000 square metres of town centre and office space, plus Exchange Street car park and the Hale Leys shopping centre. Two of the five are car parks and one is a shopping centre, which tells you how the council reads the town centre’s future.

The infrastructure question

The plan identifies more than 500 infrastructure projects requiring at least £6 billion of investment, covering transport, schools, healthcare, utilities and green infrastructure. Council leader Steven Broadbent has written to local MPs asking for government support to fund it, and the council says it will “continue to press government to ensure national housing requirements are matched by investment in local infrastructure”.

That is the real argument on this side of the county. The homes are being allocated whether or not the £6 billion arrives; the schools, surgeries and roads are not.

What happens next

The “no later than” dates in the council’s own timetable are worth noticing. The Regulation 19 consultation had to start by 23 July and the plan has to be submitted by 31 December 2026, which is not the language of a council setting its own pace.

The council is also candid about the alternative. Without an up-to-date Local Plan, it says, Buckinghamshire faces “greater risks of speculative development, central government intervention and less local control over where growth takes place”. Aylesbury Vale has seen enough appeal-led development to know what that looks like.

How to comment before 6 September

Representations are made through the council’s consultation portal at buckinghamshire.oc2.uk, where the full plan, the site allocations and the land availability assessment are published parish by parish.

At Regulation 19, the test is narrow. The Planning Inspectorate will look at whether the plan is legally compliant and “sound”, meaning positively prepared, justified by evidence, effective and consistent with national policy. Comments that engage with that test carry weight. Comments that simply object do not, and the council says as much in its own consultation notice.

Earlier rounds drew a substantial response: more than 1,300 people took part in the 2025 consultations, around 10,000 responses came back on the spring 2026 sites engagement, and landowners put forward over 1,400 sites.

More Aylesbury local information: house prices, trains to London, roadworks and travel and things to do in Aylesbury.