One of the first acts of the newly-elected Labour government was to issue a new consultation on proposed revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), continuing a decade-long search by governments of both major parties to find a planning-policy-based solution to the intractable housing shortage problem.

The Society’s response included preliminary comments embracing the need for National Policy to allow for local constraints and priorities including heritage conservation, rejecting the new “standard methodology” for setting mandatory housing development targets, and highlighting the need for planning policy to be developed locally rather than just on a “one size fits all” national basis.

The Society then offered responses to the majority of the 106 specific questions in the consultation, expressing firm views and reasons for rejecting a number of the proposals.

The response was largely the work of our Chair, Margaret Hollins. It can be found in full here.