National Planning Policy Framework

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) and all the hon. Members who have contributed today, including my hon. Friends the Members for St Ives (Andrew George), for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young), for Horsham (John Milne), for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) and for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew).

One of the abiding themes of the debate is that water and other infrastructure seem to escape the demanding targets that are applied to the delivery of housing. We need an infrastructure-first approach in which infrastructure is as prioritised as housing. The Liberal Democrats welcome the ambition to deliver more homes, particularly the 150,000 social and council rent homes that the country needs, which we established as a target in our manifesto. But the right way to deliver those homes is by working with local communities and trusting them, not through more centralisation into Whitehall. Housing targets, for us, should be established firmly in a community-led process.

The incoming Prime Minister has talked a lot about devolution and giving power back to local communities, and he is right to do so. Communities know what works for their area, but this proposed framework does the opposite, stripping power away from local decision makers rather than handing it to them.

The proposed framework comes off the back of the recent regulations and direction that mean that decisions, both small and large, are now removed from local councillors, so that they have no power or control over those decisions. It also means that proposed developments such as those at Orchard Portman near Taunton—where 1,100 acres of farms were sold off by the Crown Estate to a house builder without the usual return of payments to the public purse being required in the event of planning permission—could be decided in Whitehall, not by our elected counsellors in Somerset.

For all applications now, the draft NPPF, which was recently out for consultation, is filled with policies that weaken local plans and community involvement. It is a power grab by central Government. Across the proposed new framework document, that centralising instinct repeats itself, starting with the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Today, that presumption is a backstop, applying only where the local plan is absent or out of date, or where there is no five-year land supply. That rewards communities for investing in an up to date local plan. That presumption in favour of sustainable development is now to be abolished; instead, policies S3, S4 and S5 would impose a de facto presumption in favour of development in every circumstance for certain kinds of development. That begs the question: will councils continue to invest all their time and effort in local plan preparation?

The same instinct runs through proposals on the weight to be given to different policy considerations, giving the same weight to housing, economic development, and heritage and landscape, leaving Historic England to raise concerns about how those will be balanced. It could mean that the historic setting of the Wellington monument on Oldway Road in my constituency, currently subject to appeal, could be another victim of these proposed policies. That approach could also be in contravention of the well-known wording in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 that “special regard” will be paid to preserving heritage.

Nowhere is the centralisation of such decisions in Whitehall’s grasp going further than in the green belt. The Town and Country Planning Association has called the framework “unprecedentedly permissive” for good reason. Three elements combine to have that effect. First, the standard method, where 0.8% of the existing housing stock is applied as a multiplier and then a further multiplier is applied according to areas of high house prices. By definition, green belts constrain supply; that is their purpose. Therefore, they are areas of higher prices. In short, the standard method takes the consequence of protecting a place as a justification for building more on it. That cannot be logical or acceptable.

Rural councils have therefore been subject to much higher housing targets. For example, in Somerset, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills put across very well, the 75,000 new dwellings will come as a surprise in terms of population growth compared with what has ever been achieved in the past. Urban areas where regeneration is needed have seen their targets reduced.

The second element driving development in rural green fields is green belt policy GB7. In short, that means that a developer can secure consent anywhere in the green belt, regardless of what the local plan says, on condition that it is near a town with a railway station. Ironically, an area with no green belt might be better protected because it is not subject to those policies to allow development around railway stations.

The third and final part of the policy that leads to this greenfield development is GB2 for the grey belt. Few of us, and certainly not the Liberal Democrats, would object to local communities deciding that underused green belt land is degraded and could be released for development. But this policy overrides that local plan process, and disapplies protections against encroachment on the countryside, removing villages from the green-belt protections that they have had for decades and generations.

[Andrew George]

As my hon. Friend is aware, I am very fortunate to have secured a place in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, and my Bill will be on affordable homes. The details have not been written, so there is an opportunity to work on that with him, and indeed with the Secretary of State. I am very keen to do so and to adapt a number of those policies so that it provides a framework within which the Government can work with Parliament to improve and adjust planning policy to achieve the desirable aims.

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. He reminds me that, frankly, I struggle with the fact that such a momentous and significant policy instrument is going through Parliament without a vote. It can hardly be right that these major policy changes, which will unleash development all over the country and reverse decades-old planning policies, will not be subject to a vote, considering that we quite rightly spend weeks and months going through Bills.

I am very grateful that my hon. Friend has chosen to prioritise these issues and is bringing them forward in his private Member’s Bill. I wish him well. I know that the Minister always works constructively across the House, and his work is appreciated for that. I know the Minister will work with my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives on his private Member’s Bill, as of course will I.

Together, the existing and proposed frameworks begin to look like a greenfield-first approach. The golden rules, which would rightly require more affordable and social housing where green belt is released, are absolutely right. But the Government have consulted on allowing viability assessments to potentially undermine that. I encourage the Minister to say something on whether land should escape the golden rules requiring more social housing just because it has been previously developed. The binning of the garden city principles in the draft is equally damaging. They are the very foundation of what made the new post-war towns, such as Milton Keynes with its famous 22 million trees, some of the best places to live. That is no doubt a bit of drafting by those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Similar centralising is proposed on nature and climate. National development management policies, along with constraints on local standard setting, will stop councils exceeding the statutory 10% of biodiversity net gain. Again, proposed policy PM13 will prevent councils from setting more ambitious energy targets. We saw the folly of that under the previous Government, who refused to continue with the zero-carbon homes programme. If they had continued that, and we had had solar panels on every house built since then, we could have avoided the need for an entire 900 MW power station—perhaps a small nuclear reactor or a gas-fired power station.

Finally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills pointed out, policy F5, paragraph 2(b)(ii), would create a new exemption from the sequential test for sites at risk of surface water flooding. As my hon. Friend said, the insurance industry has pointed out that there could be as many as 400,000 mortgage prisoners in the future, unable to afford insurance as a result of these kinds of policies.

To conclude, the Liberal Democrats are firmly committed to delivering the housing that we and our communities need, but placing all the emphasis on increasing permissions for private sector homes that few can afford is not the answer. We know that that will not reduce—and has not reduced—prices to make homes affordable. New homes are only 5% of the market, after all. With 13,000 homes with planning permission unbuilt in Somerset and 359,000 empty homes in the country, we should be redoubling our efforts to deliver on both of those fronts first.

What a community-led approach really means—and this framework lacks almost anything about community involvement—is homes that people can afford: council and social rent homes, alongside rent-to-own to help people get on to the housing ladder. The environment, our people and our communities are not the blockers of development; they are—or at least should be—the reason for development, and we can enhance the life chances of both if we get it right.