NPPF Update

Michael Gove yesterday unveiled the much-anticipated NPPF revisions, which seek to boost housing delivery, whilst simultaneously now setting the standard method as an ‘advisory starting point’.

 

The Housing Secretary has confirmed that he is providing greater flexibility with regard to housing delivery targets for local authorities but revealed plans to introduce “sharper accountability” in the form of league tables for planning authorities.

 

Whilst a number of bodies have indicated that these changes will likely result in a significant drop in housing delivery, the Housing Secretary said he was ‘confident’ the government will meet their manifesto pledge of increasing housing building to 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the decade ‘once we get back to a normal level of interest and mortgage rates.’

 

Having failed to meet this target at any point since 1977, there will likely be some scepticism as to whether this is likely, or indeed whether there is a real desire at central government level to achieve this, in reality. These changes do not appear to increase the likelihood of increased delivery.

 

The key changes within the new NPPF are summarised below:

• The change proposed to Para 1 regarding the provision of sufficient housing being provided in local plans has been carried through, as has the statement that preparing and maintaining up-to-date plans should be seen as a priority in meeting this objective.
• A reference to commercial development has been inserted within paragraph 7.
• A change making Neighbourhood Plans stronger in decision making where they have been in place for less than 5 years has been inserted in paragraph 14.
• Paragraph 61 has been updated to clearly point out that the outcome of the standard method is an advisory starting-point for establishing a housing requirement for the area. This includes the addition of the phrase ‘including relating to’, suggesting that there are other reasons why an LPA can demonstrate exceptional circumstances for departing from the standard method other than the demographic characteristics of an area.
• Paragraphs 75 and 76 have been split up into paragraphs 75, 76, 77 and 78. Paragraph 76 now states that local planning authorities are not required to identify and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide a minimum of five years’ worth of housing for decision making purposes if the following criteria are met
  1. their adopted plan is less than five years old; and
  2.  that adopted plan identified at least a five year supply of specific, deliverable sites at the time that its examination concluded.

• Paragraph 79 introduces slightly strengthened changes to the Housing Delivery Test (HDT) whereby:
  1. Where delivery falls below 95% of the requirement over the past 3 years, an action plan is required.
  2. Where delivery falls below 85% of the requirement over the past 3 years, a 20% buffer should be added to their supply of sites.
  3. Where delivery falls below 75% of the requirement over the past 3 years, a 20% buffer should be added and the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies.

• A new paragraph (130) has been introduced which states that significant uplifts in the average density of residential development may be inappropriate if the resulting built form would be wholly out of character with the existing area. Such circumstances should be evidenced through an authority-wide design code.
• Paragraph 142 has been further amended under new paragraph 145 which seeks to strengthen Green Belt policy. The paragraph now states that ‘Once established, there is no requirement for Green Belt boundaries to be reviewed or changed when plans are being prepared or updated’.  As such, any LPA which is considerably constrained by Green Belt does not have to amend their Green Belt boundaries or necessarily meet their housing need, when they update their plans.
• In terms of implementation, a new paragraph (226) has been introduced whereby LPAs who have an emerging local plan which has been submitted for examination or reached Regulation 18 or 19 stage, will only have to demonstrate a 4-year housing land supply not the usual 5-year supply. This applies for a period of two years following the publication of this Framework. In addition, paragraph 230 sets out that the policies in the New NPPF will be used to examine local plans where these plans have reached Regulation 19 stage after 19 March 2024.

 

It is of note that on the same day that the Government released the updated NPPF, the House Builders Federation released their latest figures, which shows a 15% drop in housing permissions year on year (Sept 2022 – September 2023) with the report highlighting that there is a strong likelihood that these numbers will drop below 200,000, (the lowest level since 2014).

 

Given the changes highlighted above, we remain sceptical as to how that significant shortfall on delivery will be achieved in the coming years, without further changes that see a genuine promotion of growth.