A fundamental element of the new NPPF is the commitment to a pro-active and pro-growth agenda developed within the 2011 Budget’s Planning for Growth statement. The Planning System in its current form is seen by many within the Coalition Government as an impediment to growth and development rather than as a system to facilitate and enhance development opportunities. Much of this concern is centred around a criticism of an over-bureaucratic framework which involves significant delay and often refusals of eminently acceptable schemes.
The NPPF therefore sets an extremely positive context to considering development, and more specifically sustainable development.
“The Government is committed to ensuring that the planning system does everything it can to support sustainable economic growth. A positive planning system is essential because, without growth, a sustainable future cannot be achieved”
In that sense, the NPPF, as with the emerging Localism Bill, seeks to streamline the planning system and its policies, and create a positive culture to assessing development proposals. The presumption in favour of sustainable development, which “should be seen as a golden thread running through both plan making and decision taking” is the key element of the new policy framework which will drive new development proposals forward.
The positive language within the NPPF in both the local plan context and in development management is reflective of the desire for the default answer to development proposals to be “yes”. This emerged within the Governement’s Budget Report (the Growth Report) from earlier in 2011 and the use of “growth” within the document is extensive and a fundamental part of the role of the planning system in the Government’s view. The role of the planning system is to facilitate growth, not to act as an impediment to it.
Such a fundamental and positive approach to development will have significant weight in a decision on a planning application or the strategy adopted by an Authority within its Local Plan. Decisions made which do not support growth will need to demonstrate either adopted policies or other material considerations which would indicate that such an approach could be adopted if it did not fulfil the aims of facilitating sustainable development advocated by the NPPF.