Planning for the Future: White Paper - Our Summary of the Key Changes

The Government has released its White Paper, “Planning for the Future”, which sets out their proposals to overhaul the English planning system, with the aim of simplifying and speeding up the planning process.

We have set out below a short summary, highlighting the key proposed changes.

1. Zonal Planning

The role of land use plans will be simplified, with a focus on zoning measures. They will now be required to designate land into one of three categories for growth, for renewal and for protection.

Growth Areas – Land suitable for substantial development and would include land suitable for comprehensive development, including new settlements and urban extension sites, and areas for redevelopment. In these areas, permission for development would be automatically secured for forms and types of development specified in the Plan, which could include locally set, development uses, heights and density.

Renewal Areas - This would cover existing built areas where smaller scale development is appropriate. It could include the infill of residential areas, development in town centres, and development in rural areas that is not annotated as Growth or Protected areas, such as small sites within or on the edge of villages.

Protected Areas - This would include areas such as Green Belt, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), Conservation Areas, Local Wildlife Sites, areas of significant flood risk and important areas of green space. It would also include areas of open countryside outside of land in Growth or Renewal areas. In ‘protected areas’ any development proposals would come forward through a traditional planning application and judged against policies set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

2. Planning Policy

Overview

• General development management policies will be set nationally

• Local plans will be focused on identifying site and area-specific requirements, alongside developing local design codes.

• Local plans will set out core standards and requirements for developments.

• Local plans are expected to be reduced by two-thirds.

• A move to new-style digital local plan.

• Neighbourhood planning to be focused on producing design guides and code.

Local Plan Examination

• Local Plan preparation process to take 30 months and introduction of statutory targets.

• A single ‘sustainability test’.

• Abolish the Sustainability Appraisal, Duty to Cooperate

3. Local Housing Number Requirements

Changes to the standard method. The standard method would be a means of distributing the national housebuilding target of 300,000 new homes annually.

The new system largely moves away from using the household projections but instead focuses on the existing amount of housing stock in an area.

The baseline is 0.5% of the existing dwelling stock in an LPA’s area or, if higher, the 2018 household projection figures. The figure is then adjusted to take into account local house prices and wages – “the affordability adjustment”.

The implications locally as a doubling of the housing requirements for Maldon and Colchester, with marginal increases for Braintree and Tendring.

4. Community Infrastructure Levy

Instead of negotiated Section 106 Agreements and the separate, locally set CIL, the government is proposing to introduce a single, nationally set “Infrastructure Levy”. The new Infrastructure Levy would be a nationally set tax on the land value uplift that occurs through the grant of planning permission.

5. Other Changes

• There will be also be fast-track system for “beautiful building” for developers and

• Making use of technology for - both applicants and local planning authorities – to make the planning much simpler and understood by the wider community in the determination of planning applications and site allocations in local plans.