Notes on reform: what’s the NPPF *for*?
I mean. Say what you like about David Cameron. No really. I’ll start: his government’s Localism Act has been a real villain of the piece over the last decade of disasters in the English planning system. A proper shocker (for some of the reasons I mentioned here, and here). And then, you know, I seem to remember something about him calling a referendum on Brexit. I wonder how that all panned out.
But fair is fair. It was also dear old David, along with Secretary of State Eric Pickles and Greg Clark, who we can credit for that first NPPF in the heady days of Spring 2012. It was Olympic year in London. The Queen was still in the “jumping out of moving airplanes” stage of good health. Trains ran. We seemed to have a functioning health service. Anything seemed possible. Including the idea of synthesising reams of pre-existing national policy statements into a single document. Expressing it succinctly, and - at times - pretty powerfully too. Yes, that first National Planning Policy Framework was a big thing.
Have you ever wondered how the Secretary of State is even allowed to write national planning policy in the first place? Well, in the earlier days of the NPPF, the Supreme Court did too. And in the end, Lord Carnwath decided that Secretary of State’s power to issue national planning policy is derived, expressly or by implication, from the planning Acts which give him or her overall responsibility for oversight of the planning system. To what end? Well, bodies which engage in plan-making must always exercise their functions “with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development”. So what’s the point of writing something like an NPPF? Well, it’s the Secretary of State’s chance to tell us what he or she thinks that elusive idea might actually mean. And how it might work on the ground. What are the Government’s priorities for new sustainable development? What are we planning for? What’s the vision? And once there’s a vision, it can percolate into local plans, which will then guide development ideas up and down the land. It all starts with that vision.
And that’s the thing about the first NPPF. Reading it back now 11 years on. It really had a vision. Greg Clark MP’s foreword was all about taking care of future generations by embracing positive growth:
“Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations.
Development means growth. We must accommodate the new ways by which we will earn our living in a competitive world. We must house a rising population, which is living longer and wants to make new choices […] Our lives, and the places in which we live them, can be better, but they will certainly be worse if things stagnate.
[…] So sustainable development is about positive growth – making economic, environmental and social progress for this and future generations.
The planning system is about helping to make this happen.”
Sigh. I may be getting soft with age. But it’s powerful stuff, isn’t it? This language of making better lives for ourselves and for future generations by helping to make positive growth happen. And there it was, right at the heart of the Government’s central planning document. It set a vision. A tone. A direction. It sent a message. And in the end, that’s what national planning policy can do best. It was a message that really mattered. Words like that have consequences, and a great many plan-makers and decision-takers responded to Greg Clark’s vision. Am I the only one whose heart aches a just a little reading that foreword now. In the toxic swamp of today’s planning wars. How far we’ve fallen, friends. How fast and how far.
The 2012 NPPF’s big idea was its “presumption in favour of sustainable development” - the very thing today’s Tory rebels want to see ditched - which was to “be seen as a golden thread running through both plan-making and decision-taking”. A “golden thread” - lovely stuff. What’s policy without a little poetry. And the idea was simple: if a new scheme accords with an up-to-date local plan, it should be approved pronto. If there are no relevant or up-to-date plan policies, then unless specific policies of restraint indicate otherwise (eg Green Belt, heritage, AONB etc), we’re into applying what planners have come to call the “tilted balance” - more on that here and here. That tilted balance was, at least in the beginning, a powerful policy and it supported the “golden thread” to encourage positive growth. It meant that a failure to keep your plan up to date didn’t stifle the possibility of meeting needs. To avoid, as Greg Clark put it, the risk of stagnation. The idea of a tilted balance was consistent with the imperative at the heart of the whole merry dance, i.e. to meet objectively assessed needs, and - by so doing - to “boost significantly the supply of housing”. Like it or loathe it, we had there an intellectually coherent programme and a vision for what planning is about.
Did all of that amount to a big change from pre-NPPF national planning policy? Yes it did. The first NPPF was - so the Court of Appeal held - a radical change from what was happening before. The job of e.g. working out how many homes you need to plan for was no longer one of striking a balance between lots of competing considerations. No. Now, the priority was to get on and meet your objective assessed needs. The NPPF made meeting full objectively assessed housing needs not just a material consideration, but a consideration of “particular standing”. And, yes, the Court thought that was a “radical” step. And so it was.
Well, that was then. If you want to read the original 2012 NPPF, you have to go to the national archives website nowadays. Ancient history. Gathering dust. I say that - remarkably (/absurdly) a number of local plans are still being examined under the 2012 NPPF, but let’s not go down that road today.
You know what else is now officially consigned to the dustbin of history? Step right up - your friend and mine - the August 2020 Planning for the Future white paper. 2.5 years on, 44,000 responses later, and at least that many now-useless blog posts penned in these pages, the consultation has finally been officially axed. Now, go on. Say what you like about Boris Johnson (😬). Did he enjoy a party or two (or three) during work hours and, you know, in the midst of a global pandemic? We couldn’t possibly say. And heck, there were big issues with Planning for the Future (see e.g. here and here and here). But you have to at least give Boris and his Secretary of State Robert Jenrick this: that was a White Paper with a vision. A big vision. Like the 2012 NPPF, it was underpinned by a perspective, a philosophy, and lots of the changes it proposed were profound: all targeted at delivering a quicker, shorter, simpler, more streamlined and common-sensical system where we didn’t spend our lives constantly bickering about the minutiae of housing numbers. Of course, in the end, it didn’t work. And nor did Boris. But at least it took a swing at something big that could’ve really made a difference to the planning system. And again: it was built around a vision.
Why have I been thinking about those dead-in-the-water relics this week?
Because I have - like lots of you - been reading through this Government’s proposal for a new NPPF. The consultation is here. The proposed track changes are here. You’ll have seen lots of articles summarising what’s on offer. I thought this one from Bellona Advisors is good, and it helpfully cites other excellent bits from Simon Ricketts, Catriona Riddell, and Sam Stafford. For what was (I thought) a fascinating run-down of the changes line-by-line, have a listen to the recent Clubhouse event Simon organised on the topic. There’s a whole rag-bag of changes. Big ones. Small ones. In particular, in one of the weirder and more specific inserts, it’s basically Christmas morning for lovers of mansard roof extensions.
But are the ideas any good? That depends. It depends on what diagnosis you already have of what ails the English planning system. For instance:
If you think the big problem we face is too much development - and in particular too many new homes - then these changes could add up to wonderful news. Because there’s no doubt about it: they will delay plan-making, at least in the short-medium term, and that will suppress delivery, and when plans are made, the changes will give authorities lots of new ways to avoid getting anywhere close to actually addressing the needs of their current or future residents. Dear me. We’ve come a long way from that “radical” shift in the 2012 NPPF.
On the other hand, if you think our big challenge is the gross inter-generational unfairness racked up by millions of older home-owners making darned sure that the next generation will never own a home of their own, well then… you may have a different reaction. You might read these proposed changes to the NPPF as a sign of a Government throwing in the towel in the run-up to the next general election, for the reasons I started to sketch out here.
Your call.
But whichever camp you’re in, the word I cannot shake when I re-read this new “programme of reform” is:
Pathetic.
I mean - really pathetic. Aka “stirring pity and sadness.” It reminds me of the worst thing my dad could ever say to my brother and me: “I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed’.
I keep thinking - “is this it”? A decade after the 1st NPPF and its radical idea of meeting objectively assessed needs, is this what we’re left to with? E.g. the big ideas that:
Local plans no longer need to be justified with reference to proportionate evidence. What on earth. Seriously. Seriously?
Even though - for reasons I explained here - crow-barring loads of (undefined) references “beauty” into the NPPF didn’t work last time, we’re going to press on anyway by requiring that strategic policies also “ensure outcomes support beauty” - do you have any idea what that means? I don’t. And as I said here, the “refuse ugliness” idea is hopeless. Not even trying to explain what beauty means, then refusing schemes because they don’t chime with our current conception of what’s beautiful leaves us making decisions based on misguided, unexamined and often subconscious prejudice.
Lots and lots of clever ways of reducing the need to deliver homes - softening housing land supply targets from 5 years to 4 years in many cases, and in still further cases removing the target altogether, getting rid of buffers (which were originally there “to provide a realistic prospect of achieving the planned supply and to ensure choice and competition in the market for land” - not such a terrible idea, you may’ve thought, but anyway), allowing authorities “credit” for delivering against historic and outdated targets - all sorts. It’s so odd. Because in 2012, the Government told us that objectively assessing and then meeting needs was the central purpose of the planning system. To be encouraged. Nowadays it seems to be the very last thing the Government wants to see - the unspoken premise of this consultation is that housing numbers are a Bad Thing which are foisted onto authorities as some kind of punishment for poor behaviour. It’s such confused, self-defeating nonsense. All this fixation on numbers - you’d be forgiven for forgetting that behind all of those numbers are people. Young, old, and everywhere in between. People at every stage of life - united by one thing. They need a home. And they’re relying on our flailing system to provide one for them.
Still, don’t worry too much about actually meeting their(/our) needs, we’re told, if that might involve the need to review Green Belt boundaries, or the need to build at densities significantly out of character with the existing area. Urgh. Remember what Greg Clarke said about stagnation? He was right. Of course, change - in the form of new development - brings challenges. It’s the role of the planning system to balance and manage some of those challenges. What’s worse than taking on those challenges? Not taking them on. Stagnation. Drawing up the drawbridge. Planning not for the future, but to freeze ourselves into the past. Think of it: most of the world’s great settlements simply wouldn’t exist unless brave folks had decided to build “at densities significantly out of character with the existing area” (and remember, if you’re in one of the 20 biggest towns or cities in England, whilst maintaining your prevailing densities you’re also supposed to - at the same time - whack up your densities to accommodate within your boundaries a massive uplift in housing numbers - so… I’m sure that’ll work out fine). At the same time, in large swathes of England, a decision not to examine Green Belt boundaries as part of a local plan review to accommodate new homes is, in effect, a decision to stop growing altogether. A moratorium on growth - all happening on the fringes of our most sustainable towns and cities. Is this really what we’re reduced to? Not even trying anymore?
So small-minded. So weak. It’s pathetic. Some of the draft NPPF’s ideas won’t change anything (e.g. more harping on about “beauty”, or clarifying that non-binding housing targets are not binding). Lots of the bigger ticket items won’t happen until well after the next general election (i.e. so probably won’t happen at all). And the bits that may “work” in the shorter term will only lead more and more crippling uncertainty and delay to plan-making as local members start to grapple with the enticing possibilities offered by planning for lower housing numbers, and by simply failing to plan for any growth at all in the Green Belt. That last bit isn’t idle speculation. The delays are already mounting and the consultation’s barely even begun: see e.g. last week’s unsurprising news from Mole Valley.
Most of all, what’s pathetic about all of this - to my mind, anyway - is the narrowness of this consultation’s world-view. The paucity of its ambition. Sure, some of its ideas are pernicious. Others will be ineffective. But most of all, the ideas all just so very small. Who or what does this document serve? Look at those tracked changes. Where’s the guiding vision? There isn’t any. That isn’t a criticism of the tireless civil servants who have produced all this stuff in short order. It’s a criticism of our political leadership. Did you notice there were no major press releases when this new NPPF was released? No big speech. No media rounds. Did you wonder why? It’s because this version of the NPPF has nothing to say. Because this NPPF is not like its 2012 ancestor. It is not borne of a vision for planning, our built environment or our future. Nope. I don’t want to be cynical [too late for that, Ed.]. But this draft NPPF was and still is all about stasis, electioneering and grubby political compromise. At the end of it all, we’re left with a bundle of concessions designed shut up the Theresa Villiers rebel alliance (more of which here) so that they don’t muck things up for the Levelling Up Bill.
I tell you. Somehow, somewhere along the way, we’ve managed to lose the golden thread.
Happy new year, #planoraks. If you were desperately looking out for a final instalment of last year’s #planorak 🏆 awards 🏆, and who could blame you, can I point you in the direction of the discussion I had with Sam Stafford on his 50 Shades podcast which was marvellous fun - we unveiled several awards live on the air. In the meantime, stay well out there. Sharpen your consultation pencils and let the Government know what you think about it all. And whatever else you do, most of all, even though we’re all still creaking back into action this wet and windy January, do your very best to #keeponplanning.
