As Parliament went into its summer recess last week, the new Government published a draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) for consultation.
It brought back vivid memories. I did the same on 25 July 2011. I was planning minister in the Coalition Government and I drafted and put out the first ever draft NPPF.
Pleased to have replaced more than 1,000 pages of accreted Policy Planning Statements and Policy Planning Guidances with a single document of 50 pages, I headed off on holiday to the Isles of Scilly. By the time my ferry had reached St Mary's all hell had broken loose. The Daily Telegraph commissioned a logo – ‘Hands Off our Land!' – and the saintly National Trust put up posters and petitions denouncing my reforms. I have known more tranquil summer vacations.
So, I say to Angela Rayner and Matthew Pennycook: don't expect a quiet life if you are serious about planning reform.
But don't worry about it, either. For all the accusations of barbarism I faced, it was one of the most important things I did in office. Planning permissions doubled from 166,000 in 2011 to 316,000 in 2018 and, Covid apart, have stayed at a much higher level. There have been no serious moves to go back to the world before the NPPF.
But policy should be kept updated. The new draft NPPF does that in important and welcome ways. And it also junks the vandalism that was done to planning policy late in the life of the previous Government.
The imperative for planning to support growth is so important that I would like to see the NPPF dock explicitly with the new Industrial Strategy which the Government is committed to bring in
The deal on planning policy in the NPPF – then and now – is that it must be honest. We abolished top-down numbers handed to every council by Whitehall, but in return local places were required to plan genuinely for the future of their area.
An essential part of any plan must be to assess how many more houses will be needed in the years ahead and what commercial development is required. And the plan should then set out credible ways to meet those needs. Yet in December 2023, the then Government subverted the NPPF by declaring that those assessments of future need could be considered merely advisory. That struck at the root of the whole system.
If there is no need to face up to how much housing and development is really needed, then the plan it is built on it is a fake: literally not a ‘plan' to meet the future needs of the community.
I also welcome some of the new innovations included. The idea that development on brownfield land is ‘acceptable in principle' is clearer than simply having weight attached. The new concept of ‘grey belt' recognises explicitly for the first time there are areas of previously developed land within greenbelts that should be released before green fields. And the requirement that plans provide for ‘the expansion or modernisation of other industries of local, regional or national importance to support economic growth and resilience' is positive.
There are some omissions I hope will be addressed through the consultation. The imperative for planning to support growth is so important that I would like to see the NPPF dock explicitly with the new Industrial Strategy which the Government is committed to bring in.
Much of our future development should come from new towns. They can provide the infrastructure needed for sustainable development from the outset.
This policy is the focus of a taskforce led by two wise and well qualified people, who understand local government – Sir Michael Lyons and Dame Kate Barker. I hope their work will be reflected in policy soon.
And a solution is needed to the biggest weakness of the original NPPF – the ‘duty to co-operate' between neighbouring authorities.
Many matters are larger than local, but the duty to co-operate has rarely been discharged adequately. Mayoral combined authorities drawing up spatial development strategies is the right way to approach this in much of England. I hope there will be more clarity on this shortly.
The new Government has a mandate to galvanise development across Britain to provide the housing and workplaces for future generations. Planning policy is about doing so while improving, not degrading, our environment.
The reforms that are proposed build on what has been achieved and, by being published so early, can be one of the foundations of growth throughout this Parliament and beyond
Greg Clark was a former Conservative government levelling up secretary
X – @GregClarkMP
