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This explanatory note is one of a series of notes which contains information about key changes involving planning legislation and regulations. The information is intended to provide an overview of the key changes. Users should always refer back to the legislation and regulations themselves when making decisions related to land use planning matters. |
Purpose
To provide direction for updating municipal official plans and zoning by-laws
Short Description
Updating official plans and zoning by-laws on a regular basis ensures that the most current provincial and municipal planning policy objectives are incorporated into municipal planning documents, providing greater certainty for the public, developers and other stakeholders in the planning process. This process can also help establish if existing municipal planning policies are working or need to be revised to achieve the intended results.
Effective January 1, 2007, the Planning and Conservation Land Statue Law Amendment Act, 2006 (Bill 51) requires municipalities to revise their official plans, as required, at least every five years. Bill 51 identifies the matters that will determine whether an official plan must be revised and actions that must be carried out in the review. It also now requires that zoning by-laws be updated on a regular basis.
Bill 51 requires that in assessing the need to update its official plan not less frequently than every five years, a municipality must ensure that the plan:
- Conforms with provincial plans or does not conflict with them
- Has regard to matters of provincial interest
- Is consistent with provincial policy statements
An official plan must also be revised if it contains policies dealing with areas of employment, including the designation of such areas and policies dealing with the removal of land from such designations, to ensure that these policies are confirmed or amended.
Additionally, the relevant approval authority may at any time direct council to undertake a revision of all or any part of an official plan.
To ensure that municipal zoning by-laws conform to the official plan, municipalities are also now required to update their zoning by-laws no later than three years after the official plan revisions, made as part of the five year review, come into effect.
The five year requirement for review of an official plan is considered to be addressed if a council revises its official plan to bring it into conformity with a provincial plan, provided that council ensures that the revised official plan does the following:
- Conforms and does not conflict with any provincial plan
- Has regard to matters of provincial interest as set out in the Planning Act
- Is consistent with provincial policy statements
- Addresses the employment land provisions noted above
- Complies with provincial requirements of the five year review process
When municipalities undertake the review of their official plan and zoning by-laws, as noted above, the Act requires that a public open house be held.
For More Information
For more information and assistance, contact one of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing’s five Municipal Services Offices or visit the Ontario Regional Area Municipal Portal.