#PlanningReformDay 2023 - what just happened?
You’d better watch out. You’d better not cry.
To start (as I have before on days like this one) with the poem Wendy Cope almost wrote about planning:
“Bloody planning reforms are like bloody buses—
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.”
And what a day it was. It was our day. The big day. The plan-pocalypse. The plan-quake [Not sure about that one, Ed.]. A day with more announcements than we can even list, let alone read. So for starters I offer you… a humble series of hyperlinks:
The Government’s response to the planning reform consultation is here - a useful primer to key points in the new NPPF.
Michael Gove’s big speech about the Victorian history of Christmas and a few other things: here.
An accompanying written ministerial statement which covers the same kind of areas: here.
The reasonably scathing reaction to the new NPPF from Clive Betts MP, the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee: here.
The new housing delivery test results: here.
Michael Gove has intervened in 7 local authorities (the usual suspects) to review their timetable for local plans: here. And intervened in West Berkshire (as per the recent Spelthorne intervention) to prevent it withdrawing its plan: here.
Michael Gove’s busy day continued with a letter to the Mayor of London on housebuilding in London: here. Saying, a bit punchily, that “if you cannot do what is needed to deliver the homes that London needs, I will.” And appointing a panel to report in January on “the aspects of your London Plan which could be preventing thousands of homes being brought forward”.
And that isn’t even everything. PPG changes (e.g. here), a Freeports delivery roadmap… it goes on. For a canter through the headlines, I recommend the super and incredibly promptly published (even for him) review by Simon Ricketts: here. Simon says that “to my mind the NPPF itself was the least interesting of what was published today” - and I agree.
That said, there’s no chance that a meagre pre-Xmas blog post like this can cover it all. We have months of unpicking to come (lucky us). But for now, I offer you a brief primer of the new NPPF. So. Deep breaths. If you’re sitting comfortably…
The starting point, and really the end point, is this: it could’ve been worse. There are some important retreats from the consultation version. On the other hand, it remains a deeply disappointing document for most of the reasons I summarised here. Notwithstanding Michael Gove self-identifying during his press conference yesterday as a YIMBY, this NPPF will obviously (and intentionally) lead to many, many fewer homes being built - Clive Betts on this is, as normal, totally right. We’re left with a hodge-podge of sometimes random political compromises with no guiding vision (Mansard roofs!?!?!?). It has the depressing feel of deck-chairs being shuffled about on the Titanic. Alas.
But that’s the big picture. What about the detail. To avoid getting mired in minutiae, here are 4 big changes from the consultation version of the NPPF (followed by 3 things which didn’t really change). So 4 changes:
Soundness: the consultation draft proposed to ditch the requirement that local plans be “justified” with reference to “proportionate evidence”. A really bad idea. Most consultees were against it. And the Government has abandoned it. The soundness tests are unchanged.
Green Belt: the consultation draft contained what was, in my view (being only slightly tongue in cheek), the worst planning reform proposal of the year by suggesting that “Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”. That language has been broadened and softened - to the point of making it effectively pointless - in the final version, which tells us nothing new, i.e. that:
“Once established, there is no requirement for Green Belt boundaries to be reviewed or changed when plans are being prepared or updated. Authorities may choose to review and alter Green Belt boundaries where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified, in which case proposals for changes should be made only through the plan-making process.”
Now. Theresa Villiers and her gang are assuaged, apparently. But does that change the position in national policy from what we’ve had until now? Are you sitting down…
No.
It doesn’t.
So that’s the end of that.
(The Government repeatedly acknowledges the lack of anything actually changing by its references in the consultation response to adding “clarity” to the existing position, removing supposed - and non-existent - “ambiguity” and saying that “National policy continues to expect that Green Belt boundaries can only be altered where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified, and that this should only be through the plan-making process” Maybe this political sleight of hand is more about sending a political message to authorities along the lines of “don’t worry too much about meeting your needs” without actually going to the trouble of changing anything).
Densities “out of character with the existing area”: the consultation draft had suggested right in the heart of the NPPF at §11(b) that local plans need not meet needs in full “where meeting need in full would mean building at densities significantly out of character with the existing area”. That has been ditched, but instead we have a paragraph in a later section on densities which says that when applying the general density policies in existing urban areas:
“significant uplifts in the average density of residential development may be inappropriate if the resulting built form would be wholly out of character with the existing area. Such circumstances should be evidenced through an authority-wide design code which is adopted or will be adopted as part of the development plan.”
The same broad idea. In the end, it’s a bad policy (think of it: most of the world’s great settlements wouldn’t exist unless brave folks had decided to build “at densities significantly out of character with the existing area”). But the policy is at least now (a) restricted only to “urban areas”, (b) watered down to say only that significant uplifts “may” be inappropriate, and only then where they are not just out of character but “wholly” so, and (c) qualified by the requirement for evidence through an adopted design code.
Historic over-delivery: the consultation draft suggested plans need not meet needs in full if there is “clear evidence of past over-delivery”. A bad idea. Which has, to be fair to the Government, been ditched - noting in the planning reform consultation response that:
“The government heard that there was little support for accounting for past ‘over-delivery’. Many respondents considered that the proposals, as drafted, may have a significant negative impact on the supply of new homes because local authorities would be able to offset future delivery against past delivery.
The government has carefully considered these responses, and as a result has decided not to take forward this change at this time.”
And here’s 3 things which haven’t changed much from the consultation draft:
The standard method for assessing local housing need: for some reason, this seems to be one of the biggest headline-grabbers, i.e. the policy that “the outcome of the standard method is an advisory starting-point for establishing a housing requirement for the area”. Which can be departed from in "exceptional circumstances”. It’s emerged into the final NPPF unchanged from the consultation. But it doesn’t actually change anything. Because the standard method has never been mandatory, and plan-makers have always been able to depart from it in exceptional circumstances. Nothing new.
5 year housing land supply: a perennially high-profile policy. Which has, no doubt about it, been given a gut-punch by the new NPPF. Several changes, big and small. But all at least broadly as consulted on. And all with the aim of frustrating the policy’s scope. So for example: there’s now no requirement to maintain a 5 year supply if your plan is under 5 years old, and the plan identified a 5 year supply at examination (but NB - an important tweak, this new provision only bites for applications made from yesterday onwards, not to those already made). 5 year supply arguments unlikely to tilt the balance if you conflict with a neighbourhood plan which (i) was adopted in the last 5 years, and (ii) allocates sites to meet a housing requirement which itself is under 5 year old. No more buffers to your housing requirement (unless you get a sub-85% score on your housing delivery test, when your buffer is 20%) - so the detailed calculation of figures will change across the board. Only a 4 year housing land supply target for authorities with a local plan that has either been submitted for examination or has reached Regulation 18 or Regulation 19 stages including both a policies map and proposed allocations towards meeting housing need. Lots of changes, but they all tend in the same direction: narrowing the circumstances where a housing land supply argument will lead to the operation of the “tilted balance” policy at §11(d)(ii) of the NPPF in favour of new development which I talked about here. All of which is, obviously, flatly inconsistent with Mr Gove’s speech where he describes himself a little heatedly as “ardent for new development”. But there we are.
Beauty: the NPPF’s littered, just as promised, with references to beauty. Here, there and everywhere. But we’re still no closer to understanding what it thinks beauty means. So, for the reasons I went into here and here - it’s a bad policy, and an ineffective one. Here’s a test - do you know what requiring strategic policies to “ensure outcomes support beauty” actually means? Because we’ve been living with this idea for a year now, and I’m still absolutely none the wiser. Gove’s reference in his speech to development being more popular in general “when that development is beautiful” begs more questions than it answers.
Meanwhile, we can spend our Christmases mulling over where those new 150,000 homes in Cambridge are going to get their water from. In the meantime, I wish you and yours a lovely festive break. As I said in my (it turns out) slightly premature post doling out the #planorak awards, I hope you get a chance to re-charge those batteries, #Planoraks . Again, we’re going to need you next year. And every bit of your creativity, determination, ambition and skill. I mean. Somebody’s got to work out what all this stuff actually means.
Stay well, #planoraks! And, most of all, through all the chaos, try your level best to #keeponplanning. See you in 2024.
