The Government published its significant revision to the English National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on Tuesday.
Please click here for the CIfA statement responding to the final revised NPPF.
CIfA was closely involved with sector lobbying of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) following the publication of a draft revised NPPF in March. In our responses and meetings we cited several major concerns with this draft. They included provisions directly and indirectly affecting heritage being weakened or relegated to footnotes, glossary, or National Planning Practice Guidance (NPPG), a weaker definition of HERs, and wider changes to the visibility and centrality of both the historic environment and the central presumption in favour of sustainable development.
CIfA is satisfied that the final document reflects many of the changes we proposed. We also welcome the opportunity raised to consider how best to support the new policy through revisions to the NPPG.
The majority of provisions relating to the historic environment from the original NPPF are retained in the final revised document. Some passages have been re-written or re-ordered for clarity, and largely, we believe that this is successfully achieved. There is, additionally, an improvement in the positioning of the requirement for Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) to maintain or have access to a Historic Environment Record, which is now in the main text.
There will be a period of adjustment necessary, as practitioners get used to new policies, but we will be urging CIfA members to take note of, and to reinforce as necessary, Government’s advice not to read the revisions as decreasing the protection afforded to heritage assets, nor altering the necessity to afford weight to their conservation and investigate their potential archaeological interest in the development management process.
For further analysis of the changes, see this briefing from Historic England.
