The budget has ramped up pressure on our natural environment as never before – but the picture is incomplete, we have yet to hear what the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) for England will look like. We’ve been involved in the process of trying to improve earlier drafts – we don’t know what the final version will contain.
In his budget speech the Chancellor said that the new framework will be the ‘biggest reduction in red tape ever’. Referring to the planning system as ‘red tape’ shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the planning system does and the benefits it brings; particularly and fundamentally the protection it gives to our natural environment.
The rhetoric around the planning system in recent months has been often misguided but dismissing it as red tape is a new low.
When the NPPF is published our first checks will be to see if the presumption in favour of sustainable development is in there and that it is capable of protecting our special places for wildlife. We’ve been promised this before but earlier drafts have failed to convince us that the NPPF is capable of protecting the best let alone enhancing the rest.
We took legal advice on the last draft which confirmed our fears that even our Sites of Special Scientific Interest would be at real risk. So unless the NPPF has been significantly revised it will put our special places at serious risk of irreversible damage.
What we weren’t expecting was that there would be no transitional arrangements – this has been strongly indicated in the budget speech and written material and that once published the NPPF comes into force.
This means that planning authorities in the England that don’t have up-to-date plans will have to approve development, unless to do so would cause significant and demonstrable harm to objectives of the NPPF – which are unashamedly all about economic growth. We never for one moment thought that there would be no transitional arrangements. This is a scenario that we hadn’t envisaged – even in our worst nightmares. Upwards of 70% of local authorities do not have up to date local plans.
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