Government planning reforms aimed at boosting housebuilding in England have come into force.
A series of updates to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) made today (12 December) include reintroducing mandatory housing targets for councils, with areas with the greatest potential for growth receiving the largest.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said in a statement that “stronger action will ensure councils adopt up-to-date local plans or develop new plans that work for their communities”.
While continuing to prioritise brownfield, the updated NPPF will require councils to review their greenbelt boundaries to meet targets, identifying and prioritising lower-quality ‘greybelt’ land.
Under new ‘golden rules’ any greenbelt development must meet strict criteria requiring developers to provide infrastructure such as nurseries, GP surgeries and transport, as well as a premium level of social and affordable housing.
Councils and developers will also need to give “greater consideration” to social rent when building new homes, the department said.
The changes were first revealed by the chancellor in July. The government then ran a consultation over the summer. The changes are aimed at meeting a government pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029.
Prime minister Keir Starmer said: “For far too long, working people graft hard but are denied the security of owning their own home. I know how important it is – our pebble dash semi meant everything to our family growing up.
“But with a generation of young people whose dream of homeownership feels like a distant reality, and record levels of homelessness, there’s no shying away from the housing crisis we have inherited.
“We owe it to those working families to take urgent action, and that is what this government is doing.”
The MHCLG statement pointed out that under the current planning framework just under one-third of local authorities had adopted a local plan within the past five years and the number of homes granted planning permission had fallen to its lowest level in a decade.
Councils will be required to commit to new local plans within 12 weeks or face intervention from ministers.
Deputy prime minister and secretary of state for housing Angela Rayner said: “Today’s landmark overhaul will sweep away last year’s damaging changes and shake up a broken planning system which caves into the blockers and obstructs the builders.
“I will not hesitate to do what it takes to build 1.5 million new homes over five years and deliver the biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.
“We must all do our bit and we must all do more. We expect every local area to adopt a plan to meet their housing need. The question is where the homes and local services people expect are built, not whether they are built at all.”
The government is also introducing a new requirement that, where local plans based on old targets are still in place, from July 2026 councils will need to provide for an extra year’s supply of homes in their pipeline – six years instead of five.
Councils will be given £100m of extra funding next year to hire more staff and consultants to progress their plans. This is on top of announced plans to increase planning fees to cover costs and recruit an additional 300 planning officers.
Reacting to the changes, MJ Gleeson chief executive Graham Prothero said: “This morning’s announcement is a positive starting point, and I applaud the government for putting pressure on councils to play their part in meeting the housing need.
“While this is not a radical step, it shows that they are moving in the right direction and has clearly been thought through.”
Earlier this week, MHCLG outlined plans to reform the planning approvals system including through a national scheme of delegation, meaning more routine proposals are decided by unelected officers rather than councillor-run committees.
It also wants to create smaller planning committees to look at schemes related to strategic development, and ensure councillors undergo training before they can serve on a planning committee.
Prothero added: “Combined with a bold implementation of the ideas in the national scheme of delegation proposed earlier this week, this could make for a significant improvement in the planning system.”
He said he had hoped to see changes to nutrient neutrality rules to further unlock stalled sites.
“Separately from this, a considerable issue to reaching the current five-year target is funding for housing associations and Homes England – freeing up funding would have a far greater impact on meeting the target than anything included in today’s announcement,” he said.
Tony Mulhall, senior specialist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, welcomed the new NPPF.
“The changes demonstrate that policymakers are willing to take a forward-thinking approach to overhauling planning policy in a bid to speed up the delivery of housing and infrastructure,” he said.
“To meet the 1.5 million homes target, Labour has rightly identified that the private sector will have a leading role to play in increasing output, which currently sits at just 221,070 net new homes a year, and have therefore introduced policies that de-risk development and provide certainty.”
He added that targeting high levels of affordable housing on greenbelt land was “laudable” but cautioned that “viability testing at plan making stage will remain necessary and should apply as currently conducted. Many low sales value areas will not support this target, so the need for flexibility remains essential to deliver more housing including more affordable.”
Shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake told Sky News the proposals would mean planning committees would be “swept aside” and “decisions would effectively be made by central government… all that democratic accountability will be swept away and the bulldozers will simply go in without you being able to say anything about it”.
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Ian Weinfass