Our Views: What the NPPF could mean for Hampshire

The new government came to power at the start of July with a very strong mandate to deliver on two of its manifesto commitments i.e. to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years and to speed up the planning system, starting with an immediate update of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the rulebook that underpins planning decision. They launched an 8-week public consultation on the proposed new NPPF in late July, we at CPRE Hampshire have been active in contributing feedback to this. The proposed NPPF is now going through the next stages of the consultation process. The resulting new NPPF is unlikely to be delivered till well into 2025.

There is much in the Government’s manifesto on planning that we in CPRE agree with: a need for spatial planning, brownfield first and priority for social housing. There are other issues where we differ, like the proposals for development in the green belt or ‘grey belt’ as it has become known.

CPRE National Office recognise that there is some way to go to persuade the new Government that CPRE is not just a nimby organisation that will try to stand in the way of what they want to do. They have sought to engage at a very senior level, with meetings with the housing minister, senior civil servants and special advisors, and have supported where we agree with the government’s proposals and provided evidence where we disagree.

Much of our concern with the proposed changes to the NPPF is not because we disagree with the thrust of the proposed reforms but that we believe the draft changes will achieve the opposite of the Government’s professed objectives and lead to yet more unnecessary and unsustainable market housing in the countryside.

We in CPRE Hampshire are particularly concerned with proposals that we believe will have a significant adverse impact on our planning authorities and on our countryside. We also have concerns that at this early stage there is little detail available on how the aspirations will be delivered.

Examples of adverse or unintended consequences that we have expressed concerns over include.

• Restoration of mandatory housing targets for local authorities without any allowance for legitimate constraints. The new Standard Method for calculating housing targets will drive a significant uplift for some of our Local Authorities most notably Rushmoor, The New Forest and East Hampshire, the latter 2 severely constrained by the % of their areas covered by National Parks.
• The removal of the urban uplift, which previously meant urban areas like Southampton taking a higher target.
• The requirement for Local Planning Authorities to absorb these higher housing targets will inevitably cause yet more delay to the delivery of some of our Local Plans leaving areas vulnerable to speculative development applications.
• Planning Authorities who cannot display a 5-year land supply will have development imposed on them.
• There is no attempt to really address the issue that without a proper Land Use Framework we are likely to continue to build housing in the wrong place, on flood plains, on prime agricultural land and fail to create space for nature to recover.
• There is no attempt to redefine “affordable housing” to better reflect the housing that is really needed nor any target for its provision for housing built on greenfields outside of the Green Belt.

Links to more comprehensive analyses of the changes proposed in the 2024 NPPF can be found at

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposed-reforms-to-the-national-planning-policy-framework-and-other-changes-to-the-planning-system 

https://lichfields.uk/blog/2024/july/30/proposed-nppf-changes