National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)

Our comments on the latest proposed revisions

10 June 2018

In 2010 the Government threw out most of the documentation detailing the way in which the planning system works in the UK and replaced it with a much more simplistic and accessible set of rules – the National Planning Policy Framework, or NPPF.

Eight years later, and in the wake of a White Paper which identified the housing market as ‘broken’, major revisions to the NPPF are proposed, ostensibly to ‘fix’ the broken housing market. A public consultation exercise was undertaken, to which we responded. The response – a long read – is here.

Our main concern is that the proposals focus almost exclusively on housing numbers, whereas we think the key issue is affordability. Tinkering with the planning system will not address this problem, whose root causes lie in fiscal policy and the economics of land use.