Monitoring and background information

Section 35 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires every local planning authority (LPA) to produce an authority monitoring report (AMR).

Part 8 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012 sets out the information that the AMR must contain:

• details of documents referred to in the Local Development Scheme (LDS), and the timetable and stage that each document has reached in its preparation - if behind schedule, the reasons for this should be given
• reasons why any Local Plan policy is not being effectively implemented and the steps that will be taken to address the situation
• progress on achieving Local Plan annual dwelling numbers
• details of any Neighbourhood Development Order or Neighbourhood Development Plan made by a local planning authority (LPA)
• information in relation to the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)
• details in relation to any co-operation that has been undertaken within another LPA in relation to the ‘duty to co-operate’

It also sets out that an LPA must publish any up-to-date information which it has collected for monitoring purposes as soon as possible after it becomes available.

The AMR is currently produced on an annual basis and looks at the period 1 April to 31 March. Following changes introduced by the Localism Act, councils now have greater freedom to decide what to include in their monitoring reports, and when they are produced. As of 2013, Bracknell Forest is now producing topic-based AMRs, so that it is easier to update information on a regular basis. This means that updates to the topic AMRs may be published and updated at different times of the year.