Charities urge PM to rethink planning reforms and reverse “dilution” of environmental protections   

The letter from members of the Better Planning Coalition comes as ministers are set to make final decisions on amendments to the NPPF, including a decision on new  “national decision-making policies” which would overrule local authorities’ Local Plans in some cases.

The new NPPF will strengthen the presumption in favour of development by further restricting the matters which could overrule the NPPF’s “default yes” to development, the group noted.

The Town and Country Planning Association, Rights Community Action, Campaign to Protect Rural England, RSPB and the Woodland Trust were among the 16 signatories.

The coalition welcomed changes to compulsory purchase, limiting “hope value” claims by landowners, and expanding public bodies’ land assembly capabilities, among other things.

But it warned that "repeated weakening" of planning policy is reducing environmental and other protections and leading to more speculative and poor-quality development in the wrong locations.

The letter claimed that planning policy was not the primary barrier to housing delivery, pointing to a 5% drop in private housebuilding in March compared to a year ago, despite sweeping planning reforms.

"Increasing land supply by weakening planning policy while housebuilders pull back delivery will result in a further drive to more profitable greenfield sites that are poorly located and, with reduced environmental safeguards, more harmful to nature," it said.

The letter called on the Government to reverse the dilution of biodiversity net gain and environmental assessment, focus on delivering social and genuinely affordable housing as a priority in new spatial development strategies and to publish the housing strategy.

It also urged the Government to remove what it described as "loopholes" in the draft NPPF, including changing the new draft presumption in favour of development so that it supports genuinely sustainable, plan-led and high-quality applications and stops speculative grey belt and other poor schemes.

The letter added: "This includes suspending the housing delivery test given the decline in housing supply caused by wider economic drivers beyond the influence of local councils, and which if unchanged would allow for more speculative development outside settlement boundaries."

In addition, the groups recommended that the Government review the implications of the standard method for housing targets to ensure the methodology can drive densification to improve economic productivity while protecting greenfield land - and to put community engagement, co-design and co-production at the heart of the development of new Local Plans and spatial development strategies.

This could be introduced through a new “chapter 21” of the National Planning Policy Framework on community engagement, it suggested.

Commenting on the letter, Better Planning Coalition convenor Richard Hebditch said: “Weakening the planning system is not leading to an increase in housebuilding. But it will likely lead to poor quality development and fuel a backlash against development. Now is a good time for the Government to reset its approach to planning and development.”

The County Councils Network (CCN) raised similar concerns in March this year, warning that the government’s planning reforms "weakens" local communities’ voices in the planning system and raises the prospect of speculative and unsuitable development in rural areas.

Adam Carey