Durrants Jasmine Philpott, Senior Planner and Development Surveyor comments on the updated NPPF which focuses on sustainable development with stricter housing need calculations and measures to boost housing delivery across the UK.
New Year, new planning framework
Many of us will have read the headlines regarding the new government’s promise to reform the planning system in order to build 300,000 homes a year.
As part of this, the government published a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on 12 December 2024, following a consultation this Spring (see our earlier article – Three big changes in planning and how they could affect you). The NPPF is the starting point for all planning decisions and local plans, and sets out strategic policies which guide priorities and principles for decision making across the country.
Planning applications are ultimately determined in accordance with each area’s local plan, but the NPPF guides how local plans should be created, what they should contain, and provides a fall-back set of policies where a local plan is either silent or irrelevant. The NPPF also dictates how housing need should be calculated for each region, and it is this area that has seen the most change in the new Framework.
The overall message of the NPPF remains unchanged: to achieve sustainable development. However, this version is more pro-development, with an emphasis on local authorities delivering more housing and more infrastructure.
So, what are the key changes, and how will they affect the planning system in Norfolk and Suffolk?
A new housing need calculation
All local authorities (LPAs) must be able to demonstrate that they have a 5-year supply of land for housing (5YHLS), plus a buffer of 5% as a contingency. Under the new NPPF, LPAs must be able to demonstrate this every single year – it is no longer enough to refer to the 5YHLS that was set out in their local plan.
Crucially, the methodology for calculating housing need has changed, and all LPAs must use the new standard methodology. The calculation is now based on a minimum of 0.8% of existing housing stock in the area, and the less affordable the area is, the higher the percentage of growth must be. Affordability is based on the ratio of median house prices in proportion to median incomes. As an example, in an area where this ratio is 9:1, the growth number would be 1.76% per year.
Once this need figure is calculated, the LPA must then convert this into a housing requirement, which also factors in the needs of specific groups, such as the elderly, students, those with disabilities and of course, affordable housing.
It should be noted that local authorities whose local plans are in advanced stages of preparation can avoid these new measures.
New sanctions for under performance
In addition to this new metric for calculating housing need, the government has introduced measures to incentivise authorities to perform. Where an LPA’s housing delivery has fallen below 95% of their requirement over the previous three years, the must prepare an action plan to identify how delivery will be increased. Where delivery has fallen below 85%, the LPA must prepare an action plan, and add a buffer of 20% to their housing requirement. And if delivery falls below 75%, an action plan must be prepared, with the 20% buffer included, but importantly, the ‘presumption in favour’ applies, explained below.
The presumption in favour of sustainable development effectively means that where an LPA has under-delivered housing as set out above, their local plan policies are deemed to be nul and void, and planning applications should be approved unless significant adverse impacts of doing so can be identified. The local plan polices in question could for example be those requiring barns to be of historic or architectural merit to qualify for conversion, those restricting rural housing developments to either affordable-led or infill schemes, those restricting the expansion of intensive poultry sites, or even housing allocations which include a cap on the total number of homes acceptable. This means that in local authority areas where there has been a pattern of under-delivery, planning applications that would normally be refused could be approved either by the authority, or if needed, at appeal.
What this means for your site
In reality, the changes will not have an immediate effect on planning in most areas. We expect local authorities to confirm their positions over the coming months, as they come to terms with the new methodology and work out what action they need to take.
As a general rule, local authorities in Norfolk and Suffolk rarely feature in the worst performing ones across the country, so we are not expecting the presumption in favour to apply to many in our area. However, for those currently preparing a local plan (which includes Mid Suffolk, Breckland, North Norfolk and West Suffolk), it is possible that they will now need to plan for more housing than they would have done before. This means that if you have a site with long-term planning potential, you should consider instructing an agent (such as us) to assist you in promoting it when the opportunity arises.
In areas where the presumption in favour does apply and/or there is no 5YHLS, this could mean that you could make a speculative application at risk and gain an approval where you would not have previously.
Are any local areas affected by this?
So far:
∙Breckland have admitted in a recent decision notice that they cannot demonstrate a 5YHLS.
∙Mid Suffolk have confirmed they will have to start again with their local plan in order to meet the new requirements.
∙Kings Lynn and West Norfolk do not have the required housing supply and the ‘presumption in favour’ applies there
∙Great Yarmouth are seemingly rushing to get their draft local plan submitted before March so that they avoid these new measures.
My opinion
We knew that change was afoot when Labour were elected, and changes made to the NPPF by the Conservative government just before the election were widely criticised at the time. It is no surprise that the onus is on local authorities to lead the charge in delivering more housing, and the NPPF goes as far as it reasonably can in this regard.
However, anyone working in the planning system on a daily basis will know that the causes for delay and under-delivery run far deeper than the changes made to the NPPF can reach.
The ever-increasing amount of information which needs to accompany an application to even make it valid is one such example, the most recent being Biodiversity Net Gain. The requirements for even basic ecology surveys have become more onerous (and therefore expensive), and many parts of the country are in the Nutrient Neutrality (NN) catchment, where development has completely halted. The government has not found a solution to this yet, and arguably needs to if they are expecting local authorities within the NN catchment to deliver the housing growth that they are demanding.
Similarly, the burden of unnecessarily onerous planning conditions is often overlooked – many of these need to be addressed before work can even start. The abuse of extensions of time, the ability for LPAs to set their own validation lists, and the influence of local politics are just some of the causes of delay in the planning process that these changes to the NPPF will not address.
This article was published 21st January 2025.
