The National Planning Policy Framework is the main policy structure under which planning policies are amended over time. The framework itself has been in existence since 2012 and has been amended and updated several times since then. At the time of writing this, the most current official amendment was introduced in February 2025.

Following consultations, the current administration are in the process of updating and amending the framework to reflect how they believe planning and the built environment should be tackled to achieve a target of 1.5 million new homes to be built during their tenure.

Whether or not this target is achievable is not a subject for this article. What I’m attempting to do here is simply outline the purpose of the framework and why it is or isn’t relevant to you and your project.

The framework itself takes a very high level or macro view on policies that are applied at a national level for England. It doesn’t consider the specifics of each local council or planning authority. Whilst we need to understand the implications of the framework and the new guidelines therein, the impact it has on building a house in your garden for example, is less obvious.

The National Planning Policy Guidance (NPPG) is a system designed to provide insight into how to interpret the NPPF and tackles more of the specifics when looking into a planning application.

What the NPPF does do however is introduce things like changes to how housing supply for local authorities is calculated and how each local authority is responsible for managing this supply. Part of the current discussion is to re-introduce a buffer system for housing supply and a requirement to have a 5-year rolling housing supply pipeline at all times. The idea behind this is to increase housing targets for local authorities and subsequently the number of new homes built. Assuming everything is as simple as that.

There have been several articles in the media regarding how some local authorities have seen such a significant increases in their respective housing target that there isn’t an obvious land supply to accommodate these increases.

In a way, this almost forces local authorities to adopt an emphasis on approval for development, rather than a flat refusal for outdated reasons although this mostly centres around land with Green Belt status. This is where the term Grey Belt has been introduced which we talk about in more detail *Click Here* 

It’s not really feasible to outline every detail in the NPPF here, what I can say is that there have been some major changes already with more to come it seems. All with the idea of reducing or removing barriers to building. In turn, this should increase the availability of land to develop and as long as the private sector plays ball, the housing supply should follow suit. We are of course monitoring all updates and amendments as they are released and can update you accordingly.