It can’t have passed anyone by (well maybe my teenage children until I told them) that the new National Planning Policy Framework was published yesterday. There has been a hugely positive response from those in the industry and others who recognise housing as part of the national infrastructure that we need to get right if we are going to kick on to stronger economic growth and beyond.

The Radix Big Tent Housing Commission report published in October this year made a number of recommendations aimed at addressing the key issues holding back housing delivery. Whilst the publication of a new planning policy document can’t be expected to cover the wide-ranging recommendations of the report, the December 2024 NPPF undoubtedly heralds a step change in the policy environment for those seeking to deliver new development, particularly housing, aligning with the findings of the Commission. It doesn’t go quite so far as designating housing as national infrastructure but does strengthen the robustness of targets that are designed to meet the housing needs of local communities. 

There are three main areas for me where the NPPF picks up the thread from the Commission’s findings and makes a start on them coming into fruition:

Green belt/grey belt – the tackling of this issue is a major step forward and a brave political step but one that all in the industry recognised as necessary to tackle the supply of land for new housing. The NPPF now recognises that not all areas of green belt are equal and that there are parts that should be released – the grey belt, land that is lower quality such as disused car parks, old petrol stations – to meet housing targets where these can’t be met elsewhere. The affordable housing requirements for these released sites was to be a blanket 50% under the consultation version but the government has listened and this has been revised in the final version to 15% above local plan requirements, a pragmatic approach for areas where viability is challenging. The Commission also called for a standard template and process for green belt reviews – these could follow in the guidance to be published early in 2025 (which is to set out the process for identifying grey belt). Overall a major step forward.

Strategic planning – a key pillar of the Commission’s recommendations was a call for a return to strategic planning at a sub regional level. The new NPPF lays out the groundwork for this to happen emphasising the need for co-operation across local planning authority boundaries, with a recognition that spatial issues such as meeting housing needs and delivering infrastructure cannot be done effectively within single administrative boundaries. This goes hand in hand with the Government’s devolution agenda and the proposals for new combined authorities to deliver strategic governance across England. The Commission’s report included a plan showing possible strategic planning areas and we will have to wait and see how these are eventually structured (hopefully during the course of 2025) but this moves on the overall theme of the report to move towards a much more holistic, integrated and long term approach to the systemic issues in the housing ecosystem that have held back delivery.

Release of public sector land for housing – as under the old NPPF local planning authorities are to take a proactive approach to finding land for development, including land that is within their ownership. The change is that there is now more land to go at in terms of the green/grey belt as identified above. There is also a direction of travel to encourage authorities to make much more use of their CPO powers to assemble sites for development, powers that have always been available but used patchily across the country. Whilst the NPPF is not the place to sort out the red tape around procurement, best value and other elements that hold back the use of public sector land the mood music suggests that this may well be on the card in the coming months. If the targets are to be reached it is acknowledged by all that there is a much greater role to be played by the public sector both in providing land but also in proactively working on delivery.

In conclusion, the NPPF is to be welcomed by those who support the findings of the Commission, a great step towards a way out of the permacrisis.