A CLUP submission is packaged in three volumes under the HLURB CLUP Guidebook (maintained by DHSUD): the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (Volume 1), the Zoning Ordinance and zoning map (Volume 2), and the sectoral and special area studies (Volume 3) — plus documentation of the public hearing. DHSUD does not publish a fixed section count; what actually determines whether a submission goes back is completeness, not a checklist number.
Most searches for "CLUP requirements" are really asking one of two things: what has to be in the document before it goes to the province or DHSUD, or why a submission that looked complete came back anyway. Both answers start in the same place — the three-volume package the CLUP itself is built from, under Republic Act 7160, Executive Order No. 72 (s. 1993), and the review authority Republic Act 11201 gives DHSUD.
| Legal basis | RA 7160 (Secs. 20, 447, 458, 468) · EO 72 (s. 1993) · RA 11201 |
|---|---|
| Format authority | HLURB CLUP Guidebook, maintained by DHSUD |
| Submission package | Three volumes: Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Zoning Ordinance & map, sectoral/special area studies |
| Also required | Public hearing documentation — certificate, minutes, invitee list, notice |
| Fixed section count? | No — DHSUD packages by volume and topic area, not a numbered list |
| Most common cause of return | Incomplete or thin sectoral studies, or missing hearing documentation — not disagreement with the plan itself |
Per the HLURB CLUP Guidebook (an update of the 2006-2007 edition, still maintained by DHSUD after it absorbed HLURB's functions under RA 11201), the CLUP document is presented in three volumes. These are the volumes of the document, not of the guidebook itself, whose own three volumes are the planning process, sectoral studies and tools, and a model zoning ordinance (see the CLUP guidebook explained):
Separate from the three volumes, DHSUD and the reviewing province expect documentation that the plan went through public consultation before adoption: the sanggunian's certificate of public hearing, the minutes, the list of invited stakeholders and sectors, and proof of notice — the published or posted announcement that gave the public a chance to attend. A technically complete Volume 1 and Volume 2 with missing or thin hearing documentation is still an incomplete package.
No — and this is worth being precise about, because a fixed count is an easy thing to repeat without checking it. DHSUD's guidebook packages the requirement into the three volumes above, each covering a range of topics rather than a numbered list. Nova Gov's own CLUP Checker breaks those volumes down into a practical 20-item section checklist and 5 supporting studies, drawn from the guidebook and common DHSUD review practice — that specific count is our own checklist structure, built to make the guidebook actionable, not a number DHSUD itself publishes. If you see "20 sections" cited as a DHSUD requirement elsewhere, it likely traces back to a checklist like this one, not to the guidebook directly.
The failure mode is rarely a disagreement with the plan's substance — LGUs generally understand their own territory better than any reviewer does. What sinks a submission is completeness: a required study that was never commissioned, a section drafted but never formally adopted, a zoning map that doesn't reconcile with the plan text, hazard data that predates the last major disaster, or a sanggunian resolution that exists in a binder but was never attached to the package.
Volume 3's sectoral and special area studies and the public hearing documentation are the two places this shows up most, because both depend on coordination and data that sit outside the core planning team's direct control. The plan comes back, the CPDO reassembles the package, and the LGU loses a review cycle — often a year — to a documentation gap rather than a planning disagreement.
Run your CLUP draft against Nova Gov's section-by-section checklist, or book a free 30-minute call about a custom tracker built around your own CLUP workplan.
Run the CLUP Checker CLUP compliance support