NPPF: how can the Burnham government bring real devolution to rural areas?

With the publication of the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) earlier in August, the new government imposed rigid nationwide rules on housing targets and infrastructure.

For a leader who came to power promising devolution, Andy Burnham appears to have signed off a set of policies that strip mayors and local leaders of the power to plan for what rural areas actually need, missing the opportunity to deliver real devolution

But that’s not quite the whole story. Alongside measures that will put the countryside at risk, the new framework contains real wins that our supporters and local branches helped to secure. 

Our response to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) consultation on the NPPF earlier this year was shaped by a survey of CPRE branches across the country and backed by 140 campaign responses from our supporters. It called for stronger protection for the Green Belt, valued landscapes, trees and hedgerows, and for new rural homes with costs tied to average local incomes.  

Ministers listened on several fronts. The NPPF now includes tougher, more transparent viability rules, a stronger push for brownfield-first development, proper environmental assessment built into new Spatial Development Strategies, and better safeguards for peatland and wildfire resilience.  

The release of Green Belt land will now first require a strategic assessment. Where it does go ahead, an enhanced affordable housing requirement has been retained.

Grey belt, train stations and data centres

But on other issues that matter most to rural communities, the government has taken a different course. The definition of the controversial ‘grey belt’ concept has been expanded yet further, while the Housing Delivery Test remains in place, keeping councils locked into a top-down numbers game rather than allowing them to plan for the real needs of local communities.

As we warned before the NPPF was published, it hands developers a ‘default yes’ for homes close to railway stations regardless of whether they have reliable and regular services or the schools, GP surgeries and shops required to support expanding communities. Despite its supposed focus on public transport links, this policy risks new development that is car-dependent in all but name, and which in some cases will be carved out of the Green Belt itself.

The NPPF also includes provision for data centres to be given fast-tracked permission without proper regard for landscape and environmental impacts. This hands big tech firms a free run at some of our most beautiful landscapes – a Silicon Valley gold rush at the expense of England’s countryside.

Farmers get a lifeline – but questions remain

There is better news elsewhere, however. New support for on-farm reservoirs in the NPPF was announced alongside a £65m package for drought-hit farmers, including a £50m boost to the Sustainable Farming Incentive. This is a welcome, if overdue, acknowledgement that food producers shouldn’t shoulder the risks of a changing climate alone.

But £15m for reservoirs will only go so far, with the bulk of the cost still falling on farmers already absorbing new tax burdens. Sticking-plaster funding announced in the middle of an extraordinary drought is no substitute for a long-term, properly resourced plan for climate-resilient farming and food security.

Overall, the NPPF is a mixed result for rural England. But ministers have listened on brownfield land and viability tests, and offered some support to farmers. However, a genuinely devolved planning system would not force housing onto sites next to stations with no trains, or wave through data centres without a proper look at their environmental implications.

If the government truly wants mayors and Strategic Authorities to lead, it has to trust them to make these calls themselves.

CPRE will keep pressing for the housing target system to reflect genuine local need, for genuinely affordable, brownfield homes with decent local infrastructure, and for data centres to be built responsibly. Real devolution means trusting local leaders, not straitjacketing them with a rigid one-size-fits-all approach that ignores the realities on the ground.