National Planning Policy Framework

The King's Speech this week has been received with great interest.  The Government has promised to “get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing”.  This is very encouraging news given that housebuilding has plummeted far below the Conservative’s target of 300,000 homes per year, which has been carried forward by the new Labour Government.  A volume which has not been exceeded since the 1970’s, which puts the challenge in perspective with closer to 200,000 being delivered in more recent years. 

The reintroduction of mandatory housing targets for Local Authorities will help, along with 300 new planning officers and the suggestion that “grey belt land” (poor quality Green Belt) could be developed to help boost delivery.  The devil will be in the detail and we have been promised a new National Planning Policy Framework by the end of the month.  What we do not know at this stage is if this will be a complete re-write or more limited and targeted changes to the existing policy.  

Certainly, the new Government will need to remove some of the current barriers to housing delivery to realise this level of development.  Unclogging the planning system is just one area which needs to be looked at and recruiting 300 additional planning officers (not even 1 per local authority) will not be enough.  We also need the finance, materials, workforce and expertise to get more houses built.