{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.014635698377346485, 'fraction_numerical': 0.002545338848234171, 'mean_word_length': 5.152641878669276, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The draft National Policy Planning Framework

The issue of a draft National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF) in the dog days of late July was interpreted as a subversive manoeuvre by the coalition government. Whether or not the intention was to lose the consultation period in the summer holiday recess, the government has found itself on the receiving end of voluble and sustained public criticism of the proposed legislation. An attempt to reduce thousands of pages of planning guidance to just 60 meant that many of the environmental and social objectives which have tempered and arguably improved development in the last 15 years are to be swept aside in the promotion of economic growth. Planning Minister Greg Clarke has countered criticisms led by the Daily Telegraph and the National Trust that the NPPF means an abandonment of green fields to uncoordinated house-building, and the undoing of town centres by new out-oftown retail parks. Certainly, erstwhile prioritisation of the development of brownfield was absent from the draft document, and whilst a sequential test to planning approval for new retail means that town centre sites must be considered first, there is nothing to prevent retailers’ rejecting them as unviable on their own terms. Clarke challenges the claim that development will henceforth be unchecked by highlighting that the principle of plan-based growth will be upheld through adopted Local Plans. Most welcome are the proposals for community-led plans – the Neighbourhood Plan and accompanying Neighbourhood Development Order. These potentially afford unprecedented opportunity for locally generated amenity proposals to enjoy protected status in the local planning system, and to determine a high order of detail for proposals that align to the Local Plan. Questions remain as to how these plans will be drawn up and voted upon as genuinely representative of local interest. The Prince’s Foundation is working with communities in different parts of the country developing the framework for Neighbourhood Plans to emerge, in an initiative funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Our help takes the form of collaborative planning workshops on the ground in a broad range of different neighbourhood types, from small country villages to inner-city high-rise estates. The NPPF stresses that Neighbourhood Plans must conform to Local Plans, which in turn must support the principle of sustainable development at the heart of planning reform. This means Neighbourhood Plan legislation cannot be a Nimby’s Charter; by contrast, an anticipated uplift in housing delivery is at the heart of the government’s proposals. One thing is certain: big business is gearing up to press for proposals which local authorities will have to permit unless they can demonstrate clear deleterious impacts on environment, landscape or heritage. The job of urbanists just got very much harder in the UK. History suggests the proposed overturn of planning controls means the default of development patterns to the standards of the early 1980s, with “executive” housing estates and big-box retail on the ring road.