NPPF: Setting the conditions for growth
Robbie Calvert is the RTPI's Head of Policy and Public Affairs
This blog is part of a series of blog and news features on the NPPF. You can see related content below the blog.
We’ve all seen the eye-catching headlines: the ‘default yes to development’; ‘the build-baby-builds’; and the unrelenting insistence to remove those ‘blockers to growth’. Once again, we have seen the planning system nudged back into the limelight, as a suspected culprit behind our economic woes. And the blizzard of reforms we witnessed last year clearly highlighted the Government’s ambition to take strong, fast and decisive action on this, with the ever challenging 1.5million homes target breathing down their neck and the omnipresent and beady -eye of the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), watching every move.
The publication of the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December last year represented the next stage of the ratcheting-up of regulatory reform to intensify Government’s growth ambitions. Unpacking the content of the proposed Framework, the economic growth thrust is clear to see. This includes the additional weight in decision making for development proposals in settlements including a package of proposals to support intensification and densification. Outside boundaries, the increased permissiveness for development near well-connected train stations has certainly caught the planning media’s attention. And it doesn’t stop there - across the Framework there is a stronger emphasis placed on supporting growth of other development types such as freight and logistics and renewable energy.
So, the big question is - will all of this move the economic dial? And if so, will it move it enough? Well certainly from a cursory glance you could envisage a significant number of new sites coming forward, ahead of the new local plans which will be undoubtedly playing policy catch-up for a number of years.
Concerning the penetrating eye of the OBR, in their forecast following the Autumn Budget last year, they noted specifically that the lack of viable sites for development presents a challenge for economic productivity. In these regards, the proposed Framework may provide some assurance to our country’s nervous economic forecasters.
However, I would argue that the potential bigger and longer-term wins sit somewhere else in the Framework.
Woeful infrastructure investment and delivery have long since constituted a drag on productivity and competitiveness in this country. And in planning terms we all know that in many parts of England development is not coming forward in a timely manner, or at all, due to the lack of available sites. Instead, it’s the lack of infrastructure that condemns vast parts of the country to the inevitable issue of viability.
Unsurprisingly this problem has received significant attention from recent Governments. The publication of the 10-year Infrastructure Strategy, the establishment of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), the development of the national infrastructure spatial tool, attempts to streamline consenting for National Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), the list goes on.
The planning system should be seen for as the fundamental coordinating instrument of infrastructure planning and delivery that it could be. Indeed, the new proposed Framework goes a lot further in this regard - the introduction of Spatial Development Strategies (SDSs) in national policy with their key remit of identifying strategic infrastructure requirements and the fuller consideration of the critical role water and grid infrastructure in development. Our response welcomes this all but urges the government to go further. Why not consider the potential role of Infrastructure Delivery Frameworks and Infrastructure Delivery Plans? Or how about the careful overlay and interplay between all the key strategic and national sectoral plans that have significant consequence for infrastructure provision? *cough* the National Spatial Framework. But for now, of course, SDSs will have to form this guiding force.
Getting this right will vastly increase the countries long term prospects and one that could reverse the path to ever increasing regional inequality.
Theres still time for our members to submit comment before the closing date tomorrow, and we highly encourage those with the capacity to do so.
