The Society has responded to the Government’s consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The new Labour government sees these changes as an important tool in building more homes and tackling the housing crisis. They seem to be placing a high reliance on those planning policy changes, but many other actions by government are needed to comprehensively tackle the housing crisis.
From our perspective in Bristol, as a city reliant on neighbouring local authorities to meet its housing need, the two most important changes are:
- the reinstatement through legislation of strategic cross-border planning, replacing the Duty to Co-operate. Specifically, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the English Devolution Bill. Bristol has been constrained because the West of England Combined Authority could not get agreement between its constituent authorities to sub-regional housing targets, and the fall-back of the ‘Duty to Co-operate’ has also not delivered.
- the requirement to review the green belt and consider development in the ‘grey belt’ (a new term). The proposed NPPF changes defines what ‘grey belt’ is intended to mean. Essentially, Grey Belt land is land that is weakly Green Belt.
The changes in the standard method of calculating local housing targets are also significant in raising the level of housing targets nationally, but for Bristol it is the two changes above that will have the biggest impact on planning for a greater number of homes. If an urban planning authority was unable to deliver the target level within its own boundaries before the proposed NPPF changes, then an increase in prescribed housing target will not on its own change that.