Member Article

As promised by the new government, the consultation on the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has landed and now runs to 24 September.

The Labour administration has clearly been busy in the lead up to the election, as the work that has gone into this is not the endeavour of less than a month in power.

There’s a significant amount to analyse. This article focuses on investment, being one of the three pillars that the consultation exercise and proposed changes to the planning system are intended to lean on to secure economic growth. The other pillars are stability and reform.

Many of the proposed amendments are aimed at undoing previous reforms to planning policy, which Labour consider caused uncertainty, disrupted plan making and damaged investor confidence.

The new proposals are targeted at triggering investment and can therefore be summarised in two goals: getting the UK building the homes needed and growing the industries required to do this, together with delivering the infrastructure needed to access and power them. They are a precursor to further reform to come in the future, to be aligned with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill referenced in the Kings Speech.

Key amendments to the NPPF to boost investment

• Reintroduction of housing targets: To secure the delivery of 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. Local housing need numbers will now be the benchmark against which national policy allows strategic policies for the delivery of local plans to be drawn up. There will also be a new ‘Standard Method’.

• Return of strategic planning: No longer will combined authorities need to scratch their heads as to how they achieve the goals they have set for the administrative areas they are responsible for. New strategic powers (paras 24-27) should encourage cross boundary working and help to address issues where a particular administrative area is subject to specific constraints.
  
  The goal is to ensure that “a consistent approach is taken to planning the delivery of major infrastructure, such as major transport services/projects, utilities, waste, minerals, environmental improvement and resilience, and strategic health, education and social infrastructure (such as hospitals, universities, major schools, major sports facilities and criminal justice accommodation)”.
  
  Coupled with the powers contained in the Devolution Bill - also referenced in the Kings Speech - these changes could assist economically successful areas to share the benefits and availability of land for specific purposes more widely with their neighbours, identifying locations for suitable sustainable development and delivering the homes and infrastructure needed to support cross boundary working.

• Green light for commercial development: Demonstrating the power of the planning system, paras 84 and 85 contain an express endorsement of the need to plan for large scale commercial development and require local plans to allocate land for specific employment uses.
  
  Para 84(b) expressly lists laboratories, gigafactories, data centres, digital infrastructure, freight and logistics as being key to delivering a thriving modern economy. The list is not exhaustive but these areas may benefit from material national planning policy support.

• Onshore wind: To support generating clean, green energy to power future commercial endeavours and new dwellings, deletion of footnotes 59 and 60 removes the blocker to onshore wind proposals, which had been effected via the policy statement issued following the Chancellor’s speech on 8 July 2024.
  
  Amendments to para 164 also provide that local planning authorities must support planning applications ‘for all forms of renewable and low carbon development’ and ‘give significant weight to the proposal’s contribution to renewable energy generation and a net zero future’.

• New Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs): The consultation document calls for views on whether onshore wind, solar, data centres, laboratories, gigafactories and water projects should be brought into the NSIP regime.
  
  There are also changes to the thresholds at which projects are determined as NSIPs to reflect technological advances that have taken place since the regime was incepted. The certainty of timing offered by the Planning Act 2008 regime may be appreciated here, while raising the capacity thresholds at which solar and onshore wind become NSIPs will allow local authorities to authorise smaller-scale schemes on their own volition.

These measures, amongst others, are intended to have both significant short and long-term impacts, kickstarting growth and attracting investment.

At first blush, they should give developers and landowners confidence to bring sites forward, and reassure investors that a more strategic outlook can and will be taken to meet the specific needs of an area, whether for an individual local authority or a wider combined authority area.

 

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