Planning Reform

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the Government’s ongoing efforts to overhaul the planning system.

As the House is fully aware, England remains in the grip of an acute and entrenched housing crisis. It is a crisis, first and foremost, that is blighting countless lives, not least those of the more than 170,000 homeless children living in temporary accommodation today, but it is also hampering economic growth and productivity by reducing labour mobility and undermining the capacity of our great towns and cities to realise their full economic potential. In grappling with this crisis, the Government have never been under any illusions, either about the monumental scale of the task before us or about the challenges that must be overcome and the pitfalls that must be avoided if we are to succeed. However, we remain absolutely determined to tackle this task head-on and make tangible progress towards a future in which all our people have a decent, safe, secure and affordable home in which to live.

We have committed ourselves as a Government unashamedly to an incredibly stretching house building target of 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. In the face of a housing crisis of such severity, anything less would have been a dereliction of duty. Progress towards that ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes was always going to be slow in the early years of this Parliament; after all, the Government inherited a housing market downturn, one that was exacerbated by the conscious and deliberate decisions of Ministers in the previous Conservative Government to make a series of anti-supply changes to national planning policy, including the abolition of mandatory housing targets. Such is the protracted nature of the development cycle that the corrosive impact of those changes is still in evidence today.

However, on taking office, this Government acted quickly and boldly to put in place the foundations of a revamped planning system that will facilitate the delivery of high and sustainable rates of house building in the years ahead. In December last year, we revised the national planning policy framework, reversing the previous Government’s anti-supply changes, implementing a new standard method aligned to our more ambitious national housing target, and releasing more land into the system through a modernised, strategic approach to green-belt land designation and release. In March, we introduced our landmark Planning and Infrastructure Bill to further streamline and speed up the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure, and I am delighted that that Bill will receive Royal Assent before the House rises on Thursday.

Over recent months, we have carefully considered the extensive feedback we have received on a range of policy propositions, from a brownfield passport to reforming site size thresholds. As a result, I am today setting out details of the next phase of this Government’s planning reforms. That next phase consists of action on two main fronts. First and most significantly, we are today publishing for consultation a fuller and more definitive overhaul of the national planning policy framework. This wholly restructured framework maintains and builds on the initial revisions we made in December last year. It includes a range of new measures to support key economic sectors and incorporates new clear and rules-based national policies for the making of both plans and decisions.

As a result of the not insignificant risk and uncertainty that such an approach entailed, we took the decision not to proceed with statutory national development management policies at this stage. Instead, we have chosen to realise their benefits swiftly through agile national policy changes, while leaving open the possibility of a future transition to statutory NDMPs should it be required. The new decision-making policies in the framework published today are therefore designed to make development management more certain, consistent and streamlined; to standardise policies that apply across the whole of England; and to reduce duplication and avoid unjustified local deviation from national policy in local plans.

As well as setting out national planning policy in a clearer and more comprehensive manner, we are proposing a number of substantive reforms to boost housing supply and unlock economic growth in the years ahead. These include a permanent presumption in favour of sustainable development, building on the proposals outlined in our brownfield passport working paper to make development of suitable land in urban areas acceptable by default; a default yes for suitable proposals for development of land around rail stations within existing settlements and around well-connected stations outside settlements, including on green-belt land, to ensure that sufficiently dense development comes forward around existing transport infrastructure; and a targeted series of changes to drive urban and suburban densification, including through the redevelopment of corner and other low-density plots, upward extensions, infill development and residential curtilages. We will also take action to secure a diverse mix of homes. There will be stronger support for rural social and affordable housing; clearer expectations will be set for accessible housing to meet the needs of older and disabled people; and more flexibility will be provided on the unit mix of housing for market sale where local requirements for social and affordable homes have been met.

In addition to these and other important policy changes on matters such as design, vision-led transport and climate change mitigation and adaptation, the revised framework delivers on various commitments made either at this Dispatch Box or in the other place. As a result, it now includes a clear requirement to incorporate swift bricks into new developments; the application of new national standards for sustainable drainage systems; explicit protection for our precious chalk streams; and, as a result of sustained advocacy by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), recognition of the importance of providing new, improved, accessible and inclusive facilities for children’s play.

Taken together, these changes represent the most significant reform to national planning policy since the original NPPF was introduced more than a decade ago. The proposed framework is the culmination of a sustained effort over the first 17 months of this Parliament to revamp our planning system so that it meets housing need in full and unleashes sustained economic growth. We look forward to receiving feedback through the consultation.

Further revisions to the NPPF are not all we are announcing today. The second main front on which we are acting is support for small and medium-sized house builders. As a Government, we are clear that ramping up housing delivery requires us to diversify the house building market. Integral to such diversification is not merely arresting, but reversing, the decline of small and medium-sized enterprise developers that has taken place over recent decades. Building on the steps we have already taken to better support SME house builders to access finance and land, we are today announcing a series of policy and regulatory easements to help them thrive and grow.

In May, the Government published a working paper seeking views on a new medium threshold for development of sites up to 1 hectare with between 10 and 49 homes, noting that over 80% of such sites are developed by SME builders. Having reflected on the useful feedback we received, we have decided to go further. While the 10 to 49 unit threshold will apply, we propose to increase the size of sites covered by the new medium category to up to 2.5 hectares, thereby increasing the number of SME house builders being supported.

To support development activity on this new category of site, we are proposing limiting information requirements to what is necessary and proportionate. We are also setting a clear expectation that local planning authorities allocate 10% of their housing requirement to sites between 1 hectare and 2.5 hectares, in addition to the existing requirement to do so for sites under 1 hectare, to better support different scales of development. Without compromising building and residents’ safety rules, we are using the consultation to ask the technical questions necessary to determine whether to exempt this new medium category of development from the building safety levy, and we are exploring further the potential benefits and drawbacks of enabling developers of medium sites to discharge social and affordable housing requirements through cash contributions in lieu of direct delivery.

Finally, having considered carefully the responses to the consultation undertaken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs earlier this year, I can confirm that the Government will exempt smaller developments of up to 0.2 hectares from biodiversity net gain and introduce a suite of other, simplified requirements to improve the implementation of BNG on small and medium sites that are not exempted. DEFRA will also rapidly consult on an additional targeted exemption for brownfield residential development, testing the definition of land to which it should apply and a range of site sizes up to 2.5 hectares.

This Government promised to get Britain building again, unleash economic growth and deliver on the promise of national renewal. While there is more that needs to be done to transform the failing housing system we inherited, the further changes to regulation and policy we have announced today are integral to our plans to improve housing availability, affordability and quality in this Parliament. They will not be without their critics, both in this House and in the country, but in the face of a housing crisis that has become a genuine emergency in many parts of England, we will act where previous Governments have failed to ensure that a decent, safe, secure and affordable home is the right of all working people, rather than a privilege enjoyed only by some.

I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.

This Labour Government’s last planning framework began pushing development on to rural areas, prioritising concreting over the green belt and green fields rather than focusing on supporting building in urban areas, which is where we need to build most. From what the Minister has just said, it sounds as though the Government are going to double down on this approach with an all-out assault on the green belt. Over the past decade in London, under its abysmal mayor, Labour has conspicuously failed to build the right amount of housing, and now it is going to fail to build the right kind of housing in the right places in the rest of England. It clearly prefers to target building in rural areas, while not building in the cities and urban areas where demand is highest and much of the necessary infrastructure already exists.

At the current rate of house building under Labour, which is at a dismal low, the Government will fail by some distance to meet their target of 1.5 million homes. House building is falling under Labour, with the number of additional dwellings delivered in 2024-25 falling by 12,810. If the delivery of net additional dwellings continues at this rate, Labour will deliver its target not by the end of this Parliament but in seven years’ time. This Labour Government’s record on house building is dreadful—they delivered fewer homes in their first year in office than we delivered during a global pandemic. This is not a good sign for Labour’s first year in office, and now this Labour Government are intent on ignoring the voices of local people up and down the country while imposing top-down housing targets, disproportionately in rural areas, and tightening their grip through Whitehall-imposed targets.

The reality is that Labour is prioritising building on rural areas while claiming that it is grey-belt land. It is now returning to something that the previous Labour Government did, namely garden grabbing. The previous Conservative Government removed the top-down diktats that forced councils to demolish gardens, but the Minister has just promised “the redevelopment of low-density” residential plots, introducing higher buildings at street corners and “infill development” within “residential curtilages”. It is clear that, because of Labour’s failure to build homes on brownfield land, it now has residential gardens in its sights. The Government should be prioritising and incentivising brownfield development first, and making it easier to build on brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, but they are not—they are only paying it lip service. If Labour really wants homes to be built where they are needed, it should think again about how its planning framework will actually deliver.

I thank the shadow Minister for his questions. I appreciate that he has not had a huge amount of time to look over today’s announcement, but he has completely misunderstood one of the primary thrusts of the changes we are making, which is to double down on a brownfield-first approach. Through the draft framework, we are introducing a presumption in principle for development in urban areas. We want to make clear in principle what forms of development are acceptable in different locations. Building on our brownfield passports, that will mean that, in practice, the development of suitable urban land will be acceptable by default. That is a doubling down on a brownfield-first approach.

The shadow Minister raised concerns about the green-belt. As ever, this Government are committed to protecting the green-belt, which has served England’s towns and cities well over many decades, but we did introduce—[Interruption.] I am more than happy to have a debate with Opposition Members. We replaced the haphazard approach to green-belt release under the previous Government with a more strategic and modernised approach. All the draft framework does is build on that approach in a specific form by allowing development to proceed in the green-belt on well-connected stations.

I should say that well-connected stations are precisely defined as the 60 highest travel-to-work areas based on gross value added. However, as with all the policies in the draft framework, we are consulting on whether that is the right number or whether it should go higher or lower. There are appropriate densities in the framework for all stations across the country and higher densities for specific well-connected stations in those areas.

The shadow Minister asked me what we are doing on rural affordable housing. We want to see greater support for social and affordable housing in rural areas. The new framework—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, the framework makes it easier for rural exception sites to come forward through clearer national policy; makes it far easier for rural authorities to require affordable housing on smaller sites, including by removing the need for legislative designation; and removes the first homes exception sites as a stand-alone form of exception site, to avoid driving up land prices and crowding out wider social and affordable tenures.

I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

I thank the Minister for his statement. I commend him for his work on bringing the planning system up to date, which can be quite a technical process, and on the landmark Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will receive Royal Assent later this month. I welcome the fact that the Minister has listened to many people from across the sector before making some of the changes, including the default yes on development around train stations and the national standards for drainage.

We must remember that many children do not have access to a play space, so the inclusion of measures on play spaces is vital. It is easy for us to get caught up in the technical aspects of planning, but we have to remember the 170,000 children stuck in temporary accommodation this Christmas; if we do not get moving on this, they will still be there next year. That means building more homes, including social homes. I heard what the Minister said about NDMPs. I am hopeful that that will be kept under review, so that we can look at planning decisions and speed up planning reforms.

I have raised accessible housing with the Minister before; in particular, housing should be delivered in line with the requirements of approved document M4(2) and M4(3) under the Building Regulations 2010. Will there be a target for these new homes? What discussions has he had with advocacy groups and disability groups to make sure that those homes are fit for purpose for everyone?

I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee, who makes a very good point. The Conservative party does not want development on the greenbelt, and it does not want urban and suburban intensification; in short, it does not want homes brought forward in the volume required to meet housing demand across the country.

My hon. Friend asks a specific question about accessible housing. The changes we are making through the draft framework will set new, higher requirements for authorities to deliver more accessible housing. They include proposals for 40% of new builds to meet mandatory accessibility standards, and proposals to ensure that local plans provide for wheelchair accessible homes. I stress that that is a minimum, not a target. It will drive up the provision of accessible housing overall—I note that some local plans at present have 0%—while ensuring that different levels of local need are met.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Although I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement, I fear that it represents an unprecedented removal of power from local people and local government by a Government who appear to have given up on sustainable development as a driving force behind decision making. The cost-benefit statement reads like it was written in the Treasury. It sees only the benefits of development, and none of the costs to communities or nature.

Under the new framework, sustainable development is no longer the pre-eminent principle. The framework means widespread development in the greenbelt. The presumption has so many holes in it that buildings put up for any purpose, including under permitted development, will now be green-lighted for development across the open countryside. Lorry parks in green fields will be green-lighted. The framework rewrites and overrides the policies in local plans. For many authorities, the value and purpose of all the expense that they went to in writing a local plan will be called into question.

I have only one minute, which is simply not enough time to debate the most significant rolling back of planning controls for decades, so will the Minister hold a debate on the framework in Government time, so that all hon. Members have the chance to debate it? The framework will have much more impact than the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which recently went through Parliament. Will the Government upgrade the framework’s wishy-washy mention of chalk streams, and recognise them fully as irreplaceable habitats? Will the Minister reverse the abolition of BNG for 0.2 hectare sites, and go with the 0.1 hectare limit that environmental non-governmental organisations call for? Will the Government increase their target for social and council-rent homes from 18,000 per year to the 150,000 per year that we Liberal Democrats wish to see, or at least to the 90,000 per year that Shelter wishes to see? Finally, will the Government go further and ensure that the 1.5 million permissions for homes are subject to real “use it or lose it” powers before new homes are created?

I have a lot of time for the hon. Gentleman, but again, I think he misrepresents what is in this new framework, with regard to local involvement and local engagement. He seeks to give the impression that there are no safeguards on development in the new framework, and that is not true. The new permanent presumption provides significant backing for development—absolutely. We want to introduce clear, rules-based policies, both for plans and for decision making, but development still has to comply with the wider policies in the NPPF, and decisions on individual applications still have to be taken.

The hon. Gentleman raised a point about local standards. Our proposals support our overall aim of making policy more rules-based to streamline the content of development plans. The framework still allows some local standards, where it makes sense to set them locally—for example, on design, parking and open space—but where we have national standards in building regulations, including in the forthcoming future homes and future building standards, which raise our ambition in this area, it does not make sense to allow duplication and variation across local areas.

Lastly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned chalk streams, and again I want to push back. We have included explicit recognition of chalk streams as a feature of high environmental value, as I committed to doing during consideration of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Local plans will, as a result, have to identify and manage the impacts of development on these sensitive areas, such as by creating buffer zones or green corridors. We have set clearer expectations that development proposals will assess and mitigate adverse impacts on water quality, including in relation to chalk streams.

I thank the Minister for the statement, and for the support for getting our housing market going again, particularly when it comes to brownfield sites; proposals for many of them are still being held up right across the country. He says that he will not at this stage make NDMPs statutory. Many people across the sector would like him to do so, because of the extra certainty it would provide. When he talks about the risk and uncertainty of taking that approach, what does he mean? If he will revisit this question, when might he do so? What will he be looking at when he potentially makes the decision to revisit that question?

I do not have the time to go into incredible amounts of detail on why we did not choose to take a statutory approach to national development management policies. Suffice it to say that the approach carried considerable uncertainty and risks. There has been a long debate—I can see Members who served on the Bill Committee—about what a conflict between statutory NDMPs and a local development plan would mean in practice. We were concerned about the chilling effect that might have on the system as a whole, so we have decided to proceed, as I have said, with agile changes to national policy. I remind hon. Members—Opposition Members often complain about this—that national planning policy carries significant weight. Since our December reforms, an unprecedented 80% of major residential appeals relating to grey-belt land have been approved. That is the power of national policy in action, but we will keep the matter under review.

We do not have green belt in east Kent. We used to have something called farmland; it is now called blighted land, because it has been zoned for housing, but it is not being built on. House building in east Kent has virtually come to a grinding halt, and houses are not selling as a direct result of this Government’s policies. How many unbuilt-out housing consents have already been granted? Should we not be using those before we start taking further agricultural land for building?

I will say two things to the right hon. Gentleman. First, the draft framework we have published today continues to provide the protections for agricultural land that are in place in the NPPF as revised last December, including a preference that development be directed towards areas of poorer-quality agricultural land. On consented sites, he is absolutely right. We want to see more consented sites built out, and that is the whole purpose of our new homes accelerator, which we established to take forward those sites. We published a working paper on build-out transparency, but I am afraid that it remains the case that we have to oversupply consents into the system to drive up the number of houses delivered.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the housing crisis has become an emergency, but can I ask for detail on an issue that I have raised with him in the House before? He said that it is a default yes for suitable proposals for the development of land around rail stations. He knows that I have a number of sports grounds close to railway stations that might attract the attention of developers as a result of what he has said today. Those grounds are not just a green lung for south-east London, but provide vital access to sports for people from central London, Kent and East Sussex. Can we have an assurance from him that these sites will not be put under threat, and that owners will not put these grounds under lock and key, say that there is no demand for them, and start planning to build houses on them?

My hon. Friend is right that the new framework proposes a default yes to suitable proposals around train stations, particularly targeting well-connected train stations across the country, as I mentioned. He will know that in the revisions we made to the NPPF last December, we strengthened protections for playing fields. As I said to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), although there is a new permanent presumption within settlements as part of this framework, development still has to comply with the wider policies in the NPPF, and individual decisions on applications still have to be taken. I am more than happy to sit down with my hon. Friend and discuss his particular concerns about playing fields.