Proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)

CPRE’s national office launched a national OneCPRE consultation response to the draft revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on 9 August.

Since then, they’ve had an amazing response, with over 900 people completing the survey, as well as detailed feedback from local CPREs (including Wiltshire) which has heavily informed the next iteration of their response.

The key messages they received from members, supporters and local CPREs were:

• A lot of support for the proposed change to ‘mix of tenures’ and removing a requirement for affordable home ownership
• Very strong support for the introduction of social rent targets – 80% of survey respondents agreed with this
• Strong support for a change to the definition of affordable housing.  85% of survey respondents supported a change to the definition
• Strong disagreement with the proposed grey belt definition – 61% of survey respondents opposed the definition
• Overwhelming support for protecting the Green Belt and opposing any weakening of Green Belt policy
• Strong support for considering the design of new developments and requesting new homes to be high quality. 67% of survey respondents opposed removing the reference to ‘building beautiful’ in the draft revised text
• Mixed response around proposals for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) and onshore wind and other renewables
• There’s support to give weight to renewable energy projects (55% of survey respondents), however, also concerns about the impact this may have on the environment and farmland

We’ve now considered all the feedback we’ve received and have prepared a more detailed OneCPRE consultation response.

Five key themes

Ahead of publishing their full response to the consultation, which will incorporate the feedback, they are sharing on their website and social media the five key ways they think the NPPF can improve:

• Prioritise genuinely affordable homes
• Give ‘brownfield-first’ some teeth
• Protect and enhance the Green Belt
• Protect our landscapes as we transition to renewables
• Support nature recovery and strategic land use.