NPPF: Local plans ‘keystone of planning edifice’
Author: Michael Donnelly, Planning Magazine |
Planning minister Greg Clark has said the final draft of the national planning policy framework (NPPF) will make the local plan the ‘keystone of the planning edifice’.
In a ministerial statement this afternoon, Clark said a “decade of regional spatial strategies, top-down targets and national planning policy guidance that has swelled beyond reason to over 1,000 pages across 44 documents, has led to communities seeing planning as something done to them, rather than by them.
“And as the planning system has become more complex, it has ground ever slower. In 2004 Parliament required every council to have a plan – eight years on, only around a half have been able to adopt one”.
Clark said the final draft of the NPPF:
Makes it clear that the local plan is, as the communities and local government select committee put it, the keystone of the planning edifice
Is crystal clear that sustainable development embraces social and environmental as well as economic objectives and does so in a balanced way;
Refers explicitly to the five principles of the UK Sustainable Development Strategy;
Goes further than ever before and is clear that councils should look for net improvements on all dimensions of sustainability;
Makes explicit that the presumption in favour of sustainable development works through, not against, local plans;
Makes it clear that relevant policies – such as those protecting the Green Belt, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, National Parks and other areas – cannot be overridden by the presumption;
Recognises the intrinsic value and beauty of the countryside (whether specifically designated or not);
Makes explicit what was always implicit: that councils’ policies must encourage brownfield sites to be brought back into use;
Underlines the importance of town centres, while recognising that businesses in rural communities should be free to expand;
Takes a localist approach to creating a buffer of housing supply over and above 5 years, and in the use of windfall sites;
Allows councils to protect back gardens – those precious urban oases
Ensures that playing fields continue to benefit from that same protection that they do currently.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “This is another important milestone in the Government’s historic mission to transfer power from the hands of unelected bodies and put it in the hands of people and communities. The Localism Act has allowed us to start scrapping Regional Spatial Strategies which gave development a bad name by imposing top down targets that owed nothing to local needs and threatened the Green Belt.
“These reforms go a step further and make it clear that local communities have the responsibility and the power to decide the look and feel of the places they love.”
A letter sent by Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) chief planner to local authorities, issued alongside the document, confirmed the NPPF comes into effect today.
The National Planning Policy Framework is available here.