Rugby's submitted Local Plan sets 10,812 new homes to 2042, 2,886 of them on new sites. Examination hearings open 17 November 2026. What is allocated, where.

Rugby Borough Council has submitted a new Local Plan covering 2025 to 2042, and it is now in front of three government planning inspectors. It sets a housing requirement of 10,812 new homes, or 636 a year, and identifies supply for 11,729.

The plan went to the Planning Inspectorate on 27 April 2026. Public hearings open on Tuesday 17 November 2026 at Rugby College on Technology Drive, with a second virtual stage in the weeks of 7 and 14 December. Anything the council has allocated is arguable until those sessions are done.

Where the 11,729 homes come from

Housing supply in Rugby’s submitted Local Plan, 2025 to 2042 A stacked bar showing the 11,729 homes of identified supply in Rugby’s submitted Local Plan against a housing requirement of 10,812. South West Rugby provides 3,505 homes, the remainder of Houlton 3,060, new allocations under Policy S6 2,886, small site windfalls 850, other sites with planning permission 621, Eden Park 602, and other allocations carried over from the 2011 to 2031 Local Plan 205. Supply exceeds the requirement by 8.5 per cent. Three quarters of it is already permitted or allocated Identified housing supply 2025-2042, Rugby Borough proposed submission Local Plan, January 2026. Requirement 10,812 3,505 3,060 2,886 Total supply 11,729 South West Rugby (Policies S8 and S9) 3,505 Houlton, the part still to be built by 2042: 3,060 New allocations made by this plan (Policy S6): 2,886 Small site windfalls, under 5 homes: 850 Other sites that already have planning permission: 621 Eden Park, Rugby: 602 Other allocations carried over from the 2011-2031 plan: 205 The bar starts at zero. The requirement is local housing need calculated by the government’s standard method. The council allocates 8.5% more than the minimum as a buffer, so it can keep demonstrating a five year housing land supply. Source: Rugby Borough proposed submission Local Plan, January 2026, Policy S2.

The council’s own summary is blunt about how little of this is new: of the 10,812 homes required, 7,993, or 74%, already have planning permission or were allocated in the 2011 to 2031 Local Plan, and 7,279 of those sit in the three big expansions at Houlton, South West Rugby and Eden Park. Rugby has spent a decade consenting the growth it is now planning to deliver.

What is genuinely new is the 2,886 homes allocated by this plan, and where they go.

The villages are the change

Previous Rugby plans put nearly everything on the edge of the town. This one does not. Of the new allocations, 1,653 homes go to rural settlements and a further 650 to Long Lawford on the town’s western edge, against 698 inside the Rugby urban area and 535 on further town expansions.

The village allocations in the submitted plan:

Settlement Homes allocated
Long Lawford 650
Brinklow 325
Wolvey 210
Clifton upon Dunsmore 150
Stretton on Dunsmore 113
Wolston 95
Binley Woods (in Brandon and Bretford parish) 43
Ryton on Dunsmore 37

Read that list next to the Green Belt map and you can see the argument coming. The plan states plainly that these villages “mostly lie within the Green Belt and alterations to Green Belt boundaries are made”. The council’s stated reason for spreading growth outward is affordable housing: delivery has “historically been weak”, and higher village house prices make schemes viable enough to carry more of it. Our house prices page shows the gap the council is relying on, roughly £100,000 between the town median and Dunchurch or Cawston.

The warehouses are bigger news than the houses

The employment side of this plan is the part with the least public attention and the largest footprint. It provides for 1,034,000 square metres of new industrial and warehousing floorspace, about 287 hectares, between 2025 and 2042.

The largest single allocation is not in Rugby at all. It is on the edge of Coventry, west and north of Ansty Park, reached from M6 junction 2 and the M69, delivering 365,000 square metres of floorspace. Attached to it are a 75 hectare expansion of Coombe Abbey Country Park, a new walking and cycling route into Coventry, a new blue-light access to University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, and a possible route and depot for the first Coventry Very Light Rail line.

The other big employment sites are Crowner Fields Farm at Ansty (275,000 square metres, already permitted) and Coton Park East (115,000 square metres), near M6 junction 1. The plan is explicit that Rugby is taking a sub-regional load: it meets its own industrial need plus the large-site requirement for the M6/A45/A46/M45 Coventry and Rugby opportunity area, and contributes 2.5 hectares towards Coventry’s unmet need.

There is also a first for the borough: this is the first Rugby Local Plan to allocate sites for Gypsy and Traveller pitches. The 2025 assessment identifies a need for 94 pitches to 2042, and the plan finds supply for 68, enough to cover the period to 2035.

What happens at the examination

Three inspectors were appointed on 5 May 2026: C Dillon, J Glasin and K Ford. The programme officer is Ian Kemp, and everything runs through the examination website.

The timetable so far:

  • 27 April 2026: plan submitted to the Planning Inspectorate.
  • 15 June 2026: inspectors’ initial questions to the council published.
  • By 4 August 2026: examination guidance notes and the Matters, Issues and Questions published. The MIQs are the document that tells you which parts of the plan the inspectors intend to test.
  • Tuesday 17 November 2026, 9.30am: Stage 1 hearings begin in person at Rugby College, Technology Drive, CV21 1AR.
  • Weeks of 7 and 14 December 2026: Stage 2 hearings, held virtually on Teams.

One procedural wobble is worth recording. At Full Council on 22 July 2026 the council formally reaffirmed its submission of the plan. It did not change a word of it. A legal challenge involving a different council had prompted its legal advisers to recommend that Rugby formally reconsider the Sustainability Appraisal and the consultation responses, to make the original decision harder to attack. Councillors framed it as avoiding delay rather than creating it.

The clock the plan is running against

Rugby Borough Council will not exist for most of this plan period. Under local government reorganisation in Warwickshire, the borough council and the county council are both due to be replaced by a new unitary authority in April 2028. The council has published statements on it, jointly with the other five Warwickshire councils, and its own town centre plan already refers to handing delivery over.

That matters for planning in a specific way. A Local Plan adopted in 2027 by a council that closes in 2028 is inherited, not owned, by whoever comes next. The allocations survive. The political appetite to defend them at appeal may not.

Looking up an application

Rugby’s planning register is not on the Idox system most neighbouring councils use. It sits on the Citizen Portal at planning.agileapplications.co.uk/rugby, where you can search applications, read the documents and comment online. There is a weekly list of validated applications on the same portal. Written comments go to Development Management, Rugby Borough Council, Town Hall, Evreux Way, Rugby, CV21 2RR, and the council does not acknowledge them: representations are published for public inspection instead.

Where these numbers come from

Nothing here is adopted policy yet. Until the inspectors report, the plan in force remains the Local Plan 2011-2031, and every allocation described above is a proposal.