The NPPF is beginning to show its teeth with a greater proportion of planning permission being granted but there is still evidence that some local planning authorities have yet to embrace the vision that is sets out and trepidation about adopting the policy.
Although 71% of local authorities nationally have at least a published draft development plan, according to data from the Department of Communities and Local Government, nearly half the 190 local authorities reviewed by property firm Savills do not yet have a fully up to date plan.
Only 6.3% have adopted a plan since March 2012, and so are indisputably compliant with the NPPF. The number of homes planned per year has dropped by 6.1% since Regional Strategies were scrapped and the fall is larger in the South East, which has seen an 8.8% reduction.
‘Analysis of the impact of the NPPF across the southern half of England shows some evidence that planning outcomes are occurring more swiftly. However, the messages of the NPPF need further time to take effect, and despite further progress with development plan making many local authorities are hindered by plans which are not properly up to date,’ said Roger Hepher, head of planning at Savills.
The analysis found that in the majority of local authority areas, there is market capacity to increase housing delivery but planning is struggling to keep up with need. Some 33% of local authorities do not have enough sites to meet the five year housing supply and 62% have a marginal supply and may not meet the requirements. However, the first Neighbourhood Plans are moving towards adoption.
‘At the start I was concerned that reform fatigue may have set in after all that’s happened in planning over the last two and a half years. But, in fact, what has emerged is a thirst for further measures to simplify and speed up the system,’ said Hepher.
‘The NPPF has arguably already reduced the bureaucracy associated with decision making, removing 1,300 pages of guidance and replacing it with just 65. The NPPF is not however a spatial plan and therefore much is left to application and interpretation. There are signs that Planning Inspectors and some LAs are responding to the presumption in favour in a positive manner,’ he added.
Stuart Irvine, a director with planning and urban design consultancy Turley Associates, said that it is an opportunity to realise good development in a far shorter time framework and there are early signs that this is beginning to happen.
‘There is an awakening, albeit too late in many cases, to the NPPF imperative to vigorously pursue plan making. Where local authorities have brought forward Local Plans, many have hit the buffers due to unrealistic or absent assessments of need together with a failure to respond to the key NPPF tenet of the duty to cooperate,’ he explained.
‘Several high profile Core Strategies, such as Salford and Bath and NE Somerset, have fallen by the wayside following intervention from Inspectors and many more have been delayed whilst officers and members get to grips with plan making NPPF style. This is undoubtedly a growing trend,’ he added.
But he believes that it is perhaps too early to gauge the real impact of the NPPF. ‘We are yet to see a boom in housing growth, although there is a marked upturn in activity in the South East and other regional hot spots. We are also seeing an upturn in approvals for economic led development, with great weight being attached to job creation and investment,’ he pointed out.
‘The NPPF has yet to realise its true potential and it is only with the slow turning of the screw on Local Plan preparation, that the NPPF will really bite and great strides will be made,’ he concluded.
Karen Cooksley, partner and head of Planning Law at Winckworth Sherwood, said that those against the policy mistakenly regard it as a charter for a building free for all, overlooking the fact that it is merely policy.
‘Safeguards for protecting green spaces, heritage assets and ecologically sensitive species are given by statute and therefore have greater force in law,’ she explained, adding that the NPPF gives strong guidance to local authorities, developers and communities that they should be working together to bring forward development of the kind the country needs in order for the economy to grow and people to have the homes and jobs they require.
‘Importantly, the NPPF places a very firm responsibility on each local authority to comply with its legal duty to bring forward a development plan for its area and to have a proper evidence based housing needs assessment. That is a duty which many authorities have neglected or failed to comply with,’ she said.
She also pointed out that the NPPF makes plain the consequence for local authorities of failing to comply with their plan making duties, including that of identifying a supply of sites with a realistic prospect of viable delivery of housing onsite within the next five years.
‘If the relevant five year housing land supply is not identified on a rolling basis then the authority's local plan will not be considered up to date. And where the ‘development plan is absent, silent or relevant polices are out of date’ there is a presumption in favour of sustainable development,’ she added.
