LGA response to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation, October 2024

• The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales. 
• Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils. Our ultimate ambition is to support councils to deliver local solutions to national problems.

We clearly recognise the need to strengthen and increase housebuilding across the country and believe that all local authorities have their part to play. To do that local authorities need the right powers, skills, resources, and funding to take action. There is a strong appetite across the sector to work constructively to improve local plan coverage and housebuilding outcomes, including the significant need to deliver more homes for social rent and homes which are genuinely affordable.

Planning is about creating communities linked with the right economic activity and public services, whilst conserving and enhancing the natural and local environment. Critically, local authorities must be empowered to take their residents along with them on this journey to develop and build more homes. That is because it is not just homes that are required to create thriving, attractive and desirable places and communities in which to live but the accompanying local and national infrastructure, to be developed both now and phased at early and timely stages alongside the development of new homes, which is of primary concern for residents.

People cannot and do not live in planning permissions. The Government must take urgent action and work with the development and housebuilding industry to ensure there is a suitable pipeline of sustainable sites, which once allocated in a Local Plan and / or given planning permission, are indeed built out. Local authorities must be given greater powers to ensure prompt build out of sites with planning permission. Local authorities deliver permissions, developers deliver homes. Unless there is a fundamental shift in local authorities’ abilities or expectation to deliver homes, they should not be subject to punitive measures which undermine the plan-led system including the 5-year housing land supply test and the Housing Delivery Test.

It should be ensured that constituent local authorities, and local communities, have a meaningful voice and role within regional approaches to spatial planning which should be led at a local or locally-agreed appropriate level. Local authorities should always be given the flexibility to influence the geography that is most appropriate for local needs, as opposed to a burdensome central directive.

We concede that it is a difficult task to determine the housebuilding targets for each local authority area, however any housebuilding target derived by a formula which does not account for local circumstances or the practicalities of delivery in that particular location is likely doomed to fail. Issues such as land value and viability, land availability for competing uses such as employment and green space (in particular in built-up areas), water and nutrient neutrality, and geographically limiting factors such as coastal areas or those surrounded by 'hard constraints' all contribute to the genuine feasibility of authorities being able to adequately plan for these ambitious new figures.

We welcome the Government’s narrative shift towards empowering local authorities to deliver more homes for social rent, however this must be backed by practical measures both within and outside the realms of planning policy.

• The roll out of five-year local housing deals by 2025 to all areas of the country that want them – combining funding from multiple national housing programmes into a single pot. This will provide certainty and efficiencies and could support delivery of an additional 200,000 social homes in a 30-year period.
• Giving councils the powers and flexibilities to use the Right to Buy scheme and receipts in their local area will help protect existing valuable social stock and allow councils to invest in the direct delivery of new stock or acquisitions.
• The Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) grant levels per unit must be reviewed and increased to deliver more new affordable homes and ensure inflationary pressures do not jeopardise continued delivery.
• Housing Revenue Accounts must be strengthened via a long-term rent settlement of at least 10 years alongside restoration of lost revenue due to rent cap/cuts, to give councils certainty on rental income and support long-term business planning.
• Further investment should be made in the Brownfield Land Release Fund and One Public Estate programmes, with the opportunity for speedy release of public land and housebuilding on smaller council, health and blue light sites.
• Further opportunities should be brought forward to utilise compulsory purchase powers (CPOs) to facilitate land assembly and expedite the delivery of approved regeneration schemes, as well as providing the necessary resources to facilitate a higher pace and volume of CPOs.
• Increase flexibility for local authorities in the use of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding to enable it to be invested directly in the delivery of affordable housing (rather than only be applicable to enabling works as at present).

There is also no place in the current or future planning system for unfettered permitted development (PD) rights, in particular those which permit the creation of new homes without contributions towards affordable housing and requirements to ensure the new housing is high-quality. These rights represent a deregulated approach to development which undermines the Government’s own and local authorities planning policies and place-making ambitions, both in urban and rural settings. Only a locally-led planning system in which councils and the communities they represent have a say over the way places develop will ensure the delivery of high-quality affordable homes with the necessary infrastructure to create sustainable, resilient places for current and future generations.

The LGA continue to advocate for proportionate regulation and oversight relating to short-term lets that allows local discretion and implementation.

The NPPF must be stronger on promoting sustainable and resilient place-making. Within a clear set of expectations set by a national framework, local planning authorities are best placed to make decisions about ways in which to address climate change mitigation and adaptation in their local areas, and therefore the NPPF should be suitably flexible to accommodate this. The Government should also urgently bring forward a more ambitious Future Homes and Buildings Standard as soon as is practically possible, to reduce the future costs and disruption of building homes today that we know are not ready for tomorrow.

Allowing local authorities to set their own planning application fees is hugely welcomed and will help to address growing and real concerns that planning departments are facing regarding resourcing and capacity constraints. The flexibility to set planning fees, alongside other measures such as increasing the number of planners, will slowly help to address the national operating shortfall in planning departments and provide better value for money from local authorities for the taxpayer. We entirely support Model 2 – Local Variation (from default national fee).

We do not agree that the trigger for transitional arrangements should be a blanket, arbitrary figure or gap of 200 dwellings or more between the local authority’s revised Local Housing Need (LHN) figure derived by the proposed new Standard Methodology and the figure set out in the adopted / proposed plan. A more appropriate and proportionate approach would be to set a percentage difference. The transitional arrangements are complex, and we urge the Government to undertake an assessment of all Local Development Schemes to fully consider the number of plans that fall into each of the transitional arrangements and what appropriate measures need to be put in place to support these authorities. This could include ensuring the Planning Inspectorate are adequately prepared and resourced for changes to timetables for submissions for examination in certain time periods.

Elliot Gregory, Public Affairs and Campaigns Advisor

Email: [email protected]