National Planning Policy Framework

Now... clobbering people on public charge and we we know that that's another one that the what's the name of the new chancellor john john healy john healy that's that's it um you know um that's something that he should address tomorrow um but we'll see but maybe maybe this is sort of behind the scenes stuff that burnham's been talking about with healy heidi alexander so on and so forth and then uh some good news will hopefully come out of it tomorrow

I mean, one good thing that did come out last week was the changes to the MPPPF, the National Policy Planning Framework, which actually allows the channels to be dug and easier infrastructures to be set and stuff like that.

So, you know, charging...

Charging stations, charging hubs are now regarded as critical infrastructure, so they don't have to go through as many hoops to get through, to get planning, etc.

I mean, we're looking at already making representations on the London Plan.

I think that is inherently going to have to reference the NPPF quite strongly.

I think particular points are the NPPF says all development that complies with policy is assumed to be viable.

I mean, I'm sure you've covered it at length with Nick Cuff and various people that The evidence-based support in the Draft London plan is potentially questionable and testing so far has revealed a lot of developments don't quite stack up there.

The MPPF is obviously pushing density a lot more.

confusing.

Yeah, too many acronyms, I think.

In terms of the key policies, NPPF is National Planning Policy Framework, so that is nationwide, is intended to be, I think, broad brush policies which cover any development across the nation, but it also dictates what regional authorities can do, which would be the Mayor of London, and then it also dictates what local authorities should do within their plans so the idea is NPPF sits above the draft London plan in this context and then beneath that you'd have say Westminster's local plan for example and then below that you have specific they're called SPD's special policy Sorry, my mind's gone blank.

And despite there not being lots of new policy change coming forward, there is a huge amount on the agenda to actually implement and get delivered.

Probably one of the biggest bits we haven't mentioned is a huge raft of guidance that is due to support the recently published national planning policy framework.

People are keen for that to come out as quickly as possible.

There's also the further development of a suite of model conditions to support the planning contribution system, to support the Section 106 framework.

Well, there's one above that,

which is the National Planning Policy Framework, which government set.

And then there's regional government that the Mayor of London sets, as you say, through the London Plan.

And then local authorities can set any local conditions, which might be around, for example, meeting a local housing need, so the mix of housing they need, or responding to local context, so heritage or conservation areas can be addressed at a local level.

Especially the government seem to be being a lot more pro development recently.

They've obviously updated their NPPF and they've released kind of gray belt land opportunities.

They've done a big thing around train stations within 800 meters of train stations.

They're starting to release.

It sits just on the border of the conservation area, so that's another thing that we had a look at.

Yeah, so everything was kind of pointing that it would be, and also in the NPPF that came out last year, the council's housing target had been doubled, so they no longer had a five-year housing supply.

So that was just something else that was pointing to that.

And I think the Labour governments have also said, kind of puts in a thing that it's in favour of development as the kind of go-to position, and then you've got to prove otherwise rather than the other way around.

A senior planning industry source or planning sector source told me they understood that the idea of the Conservative review was to, quote, "scrap the existing National Planning Policy framework and basically rewrite it all over again from a blank piece of paper." So clearly a very fundamental review.

Yes.

If that was their objective, it'd be, it sounds like an absolute rewrite and in many ways we've just had that, haven't we, with the Labor's update to the NPPF this summer.

But what could a Conservative rewrite of National Planning Policy look like?

I mean, it's clearly early days for the rewrite of policy.

I mean, this is clearly emerging thinking, but it does sound like it's potentially going a very radical direction.

If the shadow planning minister is saying they're considering zonal planning, which was deeply controversial with the, the party and its supporters in the last government under Boris Johnson.

And we've previously mentioned about the potential ripping up the NPPF and starting again, so it really does sound like a sort of root and branch rewrite, which I think many [chuckles] planning practitioners would be, might be pulling their, might, could be forgiven for pulling their hair out at the prospect of that, given the substantial changes we've had under this government.

Speaker.

The NPPF is 130 pages long.

The London Plan is over 500 pages long.

The Mayor's guidance to the London Plan is over two thousand pages long.