The Government will consult on revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), and write to local planning authorities to say that universal local plan coverage and green belt reviews are required, before the end of the month, chancellor Rachel Reeves said this week.
Labour’s manifesto had said a Labour government would “immediately update” the NPPF to “undo damaging Conservative changes”, including restoring mandatory housing targets. It added that Labour would “reform and strengthen the presumption in favour of sustainable development”, while taking “tough action” to ensure that planning authorities have up-to-date local plans.
The chancellor continued that, “if we are to put growth at the centre of our planning system, that means changes not only to the system itself, but to the way that ministers use our powers for direct intervention”.
She said: “The deputy prime minister [and housing secretary Angela Rayner] has said that, when she intervenes in the economic planning system, the benefits of development will be a central consideration, [and] that she will not hesitate to review an application with a potential gain for the regional and national economies.”
In her first major speech as chancellor, Reeves stated the Government would also:
- “reform the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), consulting on a new growth-focussed approach to the planning system before the end of the month, including restoring mandatory housing targets”
- communities secretary Angela Rayner will write to local mayors and to the Office for Investment, a cross-government unit that works to secure investment in the UK, “to ensure that any investment opportunity with important planning considerations that comes across their desks is brought to her attention and also to mine”.
- Rayner would write to local planning authorities alongside the NPPF consultation, making clear that universal coverage of local plans and reviews of green belt boundaries “will be expected of them”.
- the Labour government would expand on Rishi Sunak’s spatial plan for energy by expanding this to other infrastructure sectors.
- she would ask the transport and energy secretaries to prioritise decisions on infrastructure projects “that have been sitting unresolved for far too long”
- the government would set out “new policy intentions for critical infrastructure in the coming months ahead of updating relevant national policy statements within the year”.
- Rayner has already recovered two planning appeals related to applications for data centres in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
- the government would create a new task force to accelerate stalled housing sites
This is in addition to ending the de facto “ban” on new onshore wind schemes in England.
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