Planning Minister Greg Clark yesterday unveiled new reforms under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to give guidance to local councils in drawing up local plans and on making decisions on planning applications.

The new 50-page document, which replaces over 1,300 pages of inherited policy, is intended to make the planning process ‘less complex and more accessible, to protect the environment and to promote sustainable growth’ while putting ‘unprecedented power into the hands of communities’.

The final NPPF retains all of the key elements of the draft NPPF published in July 2011, including:

• enshrining the local plan – produced by local people – as the keystone of the planning system
• establishing a powerful presumption in favour of sustainable development that underpins all local plans and decisions
• guaranteeing protections for our natural and historic environment, including the Green Belt, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest
• encouraging the use of brownfield land in a way determined locally.

In addition, the framework strengthens the requirement for new development to be of good design; supports local councils who wish to bring into being a new generation of garden cities; allows communities to specify where renewable energy such as wind farms should, and should not, be located; and following the recommendation of the Portas Review, allows councils to provide the parking facilities in town centres that will help them compete with out-of-town shopping centres and supermarkets.

The new framework comes into force with immediate effect for plan-making and decisions.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: "This is another important milestone in the government's historic mission to transfer power from the hands of unelected bodies and put it in the hands of people and communities. The Localism Act has allowed us to start scrapping Regional Spatial Strategies which gave development a bad name by imposing top down targets that owed nothing to local needs and threatened the Green Belt.

"These reforms go a step further and make it clear that local communities have the responsibility and the power to decide the look and feel of the places they love."

Planning Minister Greg Clark added: "The new Framework has been strengthened by the responses to the consultation. We have confirmed the core reforms, sharpened the definition of the policies, and emphasised the essential balance that the planning system must achieve.

"These reforms will help build the homes the next generation needs, it will let businesses expand and create jobs, and it will conserve what we hold dear in our matchless countryside and the fabric of our history."

However, questions regarding waste treatment infrastructure planning remain as government’s National Waste Management Plan for England may not be published until the end of next year. The NPPF document states: ‘This Framework does not contain specific waste policies, since national waste planning policy will be published as part of the National Waste Management Plan for England. However, local authorities preparing waste plans and taking decisions on waste applications should have regard to policies in this Framework so far as relevant.’

ESA’s Planning Advisor, Stephen Freeland, said: “The government’s overarching planning… rightly places sustainable development at the heart of the planning system…

“However, by deferring detailed waste planning policy guidance until publication of the National Waste Management Plan, the government must take care to avoid a hiatus in waste planning approvals. In the interim, local authorities must continue to attach weight to relevant NPPF policies when planning for and determining waste management development.”

Meanwhile, commenting on new planning guidelines Friends of the Earth's Policy and Campaigns Director Craig Bennett said: "Including a strong definition of sustainable development in the new planning guidelines is an important step forward, but this is undermined by confusing and contradictory information in the rest of the document.

"Ministers must make it crystal clear that the new planning system will encourage the low-carbon infrastructure and affordable homes our nation needs – and prevent poor quality developments that waste water and increases our reliance on expensive fossil fuels.

"But the devil is in the detail – Friends of the Earth legal experts will be watching closely to ensure local people, future generations and our wildlife are properly protected."

Countryside campaigners, meanwhile, also remained cautious in their welcome of the NPPF. When the initial draft plans were published, campaigners were outraged at the lack of protection offered to ‘undesignated land’, fearing mass development on an unprecedented scale. Reacting to yesterday’s announcements, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said: “We are pleased with the direction of travel on several of our key priorities, including the recognition of the value of undesignated countryside, the definition of sustainable development and the explicit acknowledgement that use of brownfield land is a core planning objective. Ultimately, however, the proof of the new policy framework will be how it works in practice.” Some of CPRE’s remaining concerns include: ‘continued lack of clarity… as to what sustainable development actually means in practice’; the fact that ‘The wording in the NPPF… does not require brownfield sites to always be developed before greenfield ones’; and ‘some worrying wording on economic development’ – the campaign noted that ‘while much of the alarming language in the draft, such as the “default yes” to development, has been removed’, not all fears in this regard have been allayed.

A copy of the National Planning Policy Framework can be found at: www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/nppf