Two planning inspectors will examine the MK City Plan 2050 from 15 September at Margaret Powell House. Anyone can watch, and statements are due 28 August.
The public examination of the MK City Plan 2050, the document that will decide where tens of thousands of homes go across Milton Keynes to the middle of the century, opens at 10am on Tuesday 15 September at Margaret Powell House, 417 Midsummer Boulevard, MK9 3BN. The full hearing timetable is now published, and anyone can walk in and watch.
Two planning inspectors appointed by the Secretary of State, P Mileham and S Hubbard, will spend nine sitting days across three weeks in the autumn testing whether the plan is sound and legally compliant, with a further week expected in January 2027 at a venue not yet confirmed. Milton Keynes City Council submitted the plan on 22 April 2026, and the formal Regulation 24 notice of the hearings was published on 28 July.
The sessions run 10am to about 1pm, then from 2pm to about 5pm. They will not be livestreamed, so watching means turning up in person.
What gets argued, and when
The draft hearings programme, dated 24 July, sets out which of the inspectors’ nine “matters” is heard on each day. The programme can change, and participants are told it is their responsibility to keep up with it.
| Date | What is heard |
|---|---|
| Tue 15 Sep, morning | Matter 1: procedural, legal and other requirements |
| Tue 15 Sep, afternoon | Matter 2: housing need and requirement |
| Wed 16 Sep, morning | Gypsy and Traveller provision, then housing mix |
| Wed 16 Sep, afternoon | Employment and retail strategy |
| Thu 17 Sep, all day | Matter 4: the spatial strategy |
| Tue 29 Sep to Thu 1 Oct | Matter 5: site allocations, three days |
| Thu 1 Oct, afternoon | Matter 6: Central Bletchley |
| Tue 6 Oct, morning | Matter 7: Central Milton Keynes |
| Tue 6 Oct, afternoon | Housing policies HQH4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 |
| Wed 7 Oct, morning | Employment and retail policies |
| Wed 7 Oct, afternoon | Matter 8: people friendly and healthy places |
| Thu 8 Oct, all day | Matter 9: climate, biodiversity, sustainable construction and heritage |
Mondays and Fridays are not sitting days.
The questions the inspectors have actually asked
The most revealing document is the inspectors’ Matters, Issues and Questions, because it shows what they are unconvinced by rather than what the council wants to talk about. Four things stand out for residents.
The buffer above what the government requires. Question 2.4 asks whether “the additional 9,407 homes above the output from the calculation of the standard method” are justified as a buffer. In plain terms, the council is planning for roughly 9,400 more homes than the national formula produces for Milton Keynes, and the inspectors want that argued rather than asserted.
Two different supply figures. Question 12.1 notes that the council’s own response to the inspectors’ initial questions forecasts housing supply of 50,390 dwellings, while its topic paper TP06 gives 50,287. The inspectors have asked the council to explain the difference. The plan period runs from 2022 to 2050.
16,000 homes in the city centre. Question 7.1 asks how the identification of “around 16,000 new homes in Central Milton Keynes” was arrived at. Central Bletchley gets its own matter and its own session, with questions on density ranges under draft policy CB1.
Two large external factors the plan has to absorb. The inspectors ask (4.11) how the plan will respond to cumulative effects from the Universal Studios UK Resort, approved through a Special Development Order, and (4.12) how it would respond to the proposed new town within the Milton Keynes administrative area. They also press hard on the MK Metro: question 4.14 asks “what certainty is there that the Metro (mass rapid transit) will be delivered and what are the implications for the plan if the Metro is not delivered or is delayed?”
That last one matters beyond transport. Draft policy GS9 ties development density to distance from transit interchanges, so if the Metro slips, the geography of where homes are allowed shifts with it.
What it means for you
If you want to submit a written statement, the deadline is 5pm on Friday 28 August 2026 for Stage 1, covering Matters 1 to 9. The inspectors’ guidance note calls it “a strict deadline which must be adhered to for the hearing sessions to proceed as planned”. Stage 2, covering Matters 10 to 13, is estimated for December 2026.
Statements go to the Programme Officer, must be no more than 3,000 words, in A4, with no appended evidence, and must quote the respondent reference number. The guidance also flags something new for a local plan examination: anyone using artificial intelligence to draft a hearing statement is pointed at the Planning Inspectorate’s AI guidance.
Two limits are worth being clear about. The deadline to register to speak at a hearing session passed at 5pm on Monday 10 August. And hearing statements are not a second bite: the guidance is explicit that they “are not an opportunity to introduce additional points that had not previously been raised in your representations on the Plan”. If you did not comment at the Regulation 19 stage, you cannot open a new front now.
What you can still do is turn up. The Regulation 24 notice states plainly that anyone may come and observe hearing sessions. For a plan that will shape Bletchley, the city centre and the open countryside around the villages for the next 24 years, three weeks of public argument in a room on Midsummer Boulevard is the most direct look at it anyone will get.
All correspondence goes to the independent Programme Officer, Ian Kemp, at ian@localplanservices.co.uk, and the examination documents sit on the examination website rather than the council’s own pages, which is where most people look first and come away empty handed.
Elsewhere on MK Daily
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