In August last year, this column set out the Government’s draft changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF); the concise set of policies to be applied to all planning applications in England and Wales on planning issues, such as housing, Green Belt, employment land, heritage, flood risk and sustainability. It is usually followed by LPAs with some local exceptions where departures to suit local circumstances can be justified (e.g. acute shortage of affordable housing and lower affordable housing thresholds).

The NPPF was formally adopted in December 2024 and has made a number of changes and strong statements regarding the Government’s intention to deliver further (or at time of writing, ‘any’) growth and to deliver the Government’s ‘ambitious’ housing targets.

Despite its broad statements, there are some very useful signals and statements set out in the NPPF, which alongside well-considered development proposals, could be deployed to improve the prospects of obtaining consent. There are also indications of where new development opportunity might lay. However, all opportunity is subject to policy conditions and limitations.

Housing supply and delivery targets
The Government echoes in several areas of the NPPF a common theme – a strong preference for development on ‘brownfield’ land. However, such will be the difficulty in achieving the 1.5m homes target that has been set for this Parliament, the Government has ‘left the door open’ for sites that are not on previously developed land or that are in less sustainable locations.

For example, the standard method form of calculation of housing supply previously applied a weighted uplift toward sites on brownfield land (paragraph 62 and footnote 28). This is now removed and implies the possibility of being able to build outside urban centres and deliver homes on less sustainable sites.