The Government has today published the new National Planning Policy Framework, replacing 44 previous PPSs, PPGs, Minerals Planning Guidance, Circulars and Letters to Chief Planning Officers with 50 pages of policy. The new NPPF takes effect immediately, and is now a material consideration in the determination of all new planning permissions.
The previous draft NPPF created controversy over its presumption in favour of sustainable development, the perceived risk of loss of protection for the Green Belt, changes to the way the five-year housing land supply calculation was to be done and for fears that the "town centre first" policy for new retail and office developments had been undermined. The headlines in the final NPPF on those topics are:
Definition of "Sustainable Development": The NPPF has strengthened the definition of Sustainable Development, incorporating wording from the Brundtland report, and cross referring to the UK Sustainable Development Strategy.
Presumption in favour of development: Applications which accord with the development plan must be approved without delay, and where the relevant development plan is absent, silent or the relevant policies are out of date, planning permission should be granted unless the adverse impacts of development would "significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in the Framework taken as a whole; or specific policies in the Framework indicated that development should be restricted".
Green Belt protection: Protection for Green Belt land in the NPPF has been strengthened. "Substantial weight" must be given to any harm to the Green Belt, and the "very special circumstances" which must be shown to justify approval of inappropriate development in the Green Belt will not exist unless the harm is "clearly outweighed" by other considerations.
Re-use of Brownfield Land: The policy requiring local authorities to prioritise re-use of previously developed land is retained. The change in the final NPPF is that local authorities may continue to consider setting a local target for the use of brownfield land.
Housing Land Supply: Local authorities must produce and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide five years' housing supply against plan requirements, with a buffer of 5%. Whilst the draft NPPF included a requirement for a buffer of 20%, in the final plan this will only apply to authorities that have persistently failed to deliver housing against their targets.
Town Centres: The NPPF brings offices and leisure uses back into the scope of the town centres policy, and retains the requirement for sequential testing. Applications which fail the sequential test or are likely to have significant adverse impacts should be refused. This is in line with the previous PPS4 position. In the plan-making context, the NPPF stresses the importance of ensuring that needs for retail, leisure, office and other main town centre uses are "met in full and are not compromised by limited site availability".
Viability: Local authorities are urged to ensure that development plans are deliverable, and that new development sites are not subject to such a scale of obligations as to threaten their ability to be developed viably. Local authorities are urged to discuss the need for conditions or s106 obligations with the developer and to explore the options for keeping the costs of those to a minimum, but it is clear that development should not be approved if the necessary mitigation measures cannot be secured.
A copy of the NPPF can be found here: http://bit.ly/GTZedY
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
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The original publication date for this article was 27/03/2012.
