In a double announcement, the government has revised planning policy and green-lit new legislation, with hopes of making a dent in its 1.5 million new homes target. Ben Standing, partner in planning at UK and Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson, examines the key themes from the twin-track reforms
It was in late 2024 when the government first signalled its intention to cut through the red tape holding back housebuilding via its revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
Twelve months later, it came back with a wrecking ball after realising that to build, it must first demolish much of the planning system as we know it.
The latest version of the NPPF isn’t simply a list of tracked changes, but a complete rewrite of England’s planning policy, representing the biggest transformation since its introduction in 2012.
Two days after launching a consultation on the draft policy document, which runs until 10 March, the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill received royal assent.
This provided further confirmation that Labour believes housebuilding can unlock economic growth that has remained sluggish during its first 18 months in office.
For local authority planners and developers, the impact of these changes will be significant.
However, the big question remains: is it solely the planning system that’s holding back development on the scale desired by government, or are the problems much broader, such as public perception of development, viability of schemes and availability of skilled workers?
Key changes in the new National Planning Policy Framework
The late 2025 draft may be the sixth version of the NPPF, but it features noticeably different language and concepts that will fundamentally alter the various tests used by planners and developers.
By changing wording entirely, old case law may get thrown out the window, providing an opportunity for a genuinely new approach to how planning decisions are made by local and national government.
In analysing some of the new NPPF’s details, there’s a targeted push to unlock small and medium-sized plots of land for development, often regarded as the most difficult sites to bring forward for development due to land costs and local opposition.
Measures include a new “medium” category for sites that benefit from a streamlined approach to obligations, such as paying contributions in lieu of affordable housing; exemptions from biodiversity net gain regulations for smaller sites, to be implemented separately; and new benchmark land values.
The NPPF also introduces a “permanent presumption” in favour of suitably located development, particularly on brownfield, urban land.
To achieve this, the draft NPPF introduces a distinction between development proposals inside and outside of settlements.
For development proposals within settlements, the presumption is that they will be approved unless the benefits would be “substantially outweighed” by adverse effects. This is different from the current test of “significantly and demonstrably outweighing” the benefits, which is applied whether or not the proposals are within a settlement.
This change in wording marks a departure from the previous NPPF and encourages an interpretation that facilitates planning consent to be granted.
For those outside the settlement boundary, there are set types of development that would be successful, including within a reasonable walking distance of a railway station that “provides a high level of connectivity to jobs and services”. This is likely to put significant pressure on villages with a station connecting with an urban centre.
Considered alongside a raft of other changes, these changes therefore fundamentally change how councils and developers consider development proposals.
What’s in the Planning and Infrastructure Act?
There’s a clear link between the legislative and policy instruments being used by government. The drive to unlock smaller sites in the NPPF is complemented by provisions in the Planning and Infrastructure Act.
These include streamlining consultations for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs), introducing the ability for developers to pay to compensate for environmental harm, and bolstering development corporations to deliver large-scale new towns and communities.
Replicating spatial development strategies that are already established in London across the English regions is designed to facilitate a joined-up approach across multiple local authorities to identify the most suitable places to build houses and associated infrastructure.
Tied into this is a dedicated focus on continuously updating five-year local plans. Where these are outdated, there’s a high likelihood that development will come forward on a piecemeal and speculative basis, with reduced public engagement and fewer guarantees that it will make the most of an area’s potential.
Risk of creating uncertainty
Successive governments have tweaked planning policy over and again, but the reality is it’s had little impact on building rates, which remain way behind the 300,000 annual target at 204,000 in 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Labour’s attempt to rip up the rulebook and start again finally has the potential to fundamentally alter how we look at planning. Yet for all this excitement, there’s a danger that constant flip-flopping – this was the third December running it’s been amended – holds back development rather than accelerates it.
It also does not address the PR problem that development faces, with residents often strongly opposed to any development in their area.
In our experience, regular significant changes to the system create uncertainty for developers on how to cost these in, while local authority planners require sufficient guidance so they can make good decisions.
More broadly, planning policy will only ever be one piece of the jigsaw in the government’s quest to build more homes. It must address the viability problem by tackling the wider economic and skills challenges that make construction so expensive, and the general perception by the population that new development only brings negatives.
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