On 19th December, just as Parliament was about to go into its Christmas recess, the Government published its reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework. This is a vitally important document because it sets out the terms within which local planning authorities (in our case the elected New Forest District Council) must determine planning applications.
I say it is vitally important because housing development is, by a country mile, the most common complaint that prompts constituents to contact me.
There is an acute housing shortage nationally, and the New Forest is no exception. Few young people, born and brought-up in this district have any prospect of being able to afford a home here either to purchase or to rent. Nevertheless, almost every significant housing development becomes the focus of local opposition. Increasingly, even though residents accept the need for more houses, they believe that proposed developments represent the sort of housing that it suits developers to build, rather than the sort that the community actually needs.
The new National Planning Policy Framework is designed to support the Government’s commitment to building more homes; more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably.
It gives much greater scope to local planning authorities like NFDC to determine what kind of development is appropriate through their own updated local plan; to reject inappropriate development and protect the Green Belt.
In this respects it builds on the reforms that have been implemented incrementally since 2010, including abolishing housing targets imposed from Whitehall. Frankly, those Labour-imposed regional targets simply didn’t work. In fact, they built nothing but resentment: housebuilding fell to its lowest peacetime levels since the 1920s. By contrast, net housing supply last year was higher than any point under the last Labour government’s targets, and over 2.5 million extra homes have been delivered across England since 2010. It is just bizarre, given the evidence, that the Labour Party have announced that, were they to return to government, they would re-impose the central housing targets.
The new Framework was preceded by a consultation which began in December 2022 and ended in March 2033 and generated 2,600 responses.
One of the issues consulted upon, and about which the Government has yet to respond, was the question of implementing the power set out in the Levelling-up Act 2023 which will enable local planning authorities to decline applications from developers whose previous record has been poor.
Currently every planning application has to be determined entirely on its own individual merit. It is important that this new power to take into account the developer’s previous record is implemented as soon as possible. One of the reasons given by opponents of proposed housing developments is the developer’s poor record of honouring undertakings and abiding by the conditions upon which permission has been granted in the first place. Giving the promised power to planning authorities would improve public confidence in the planning system by ensuring that developers raise their game.