In detail: what the NPPF changes mean for housing delivery

Mandatory housing targets

One major reversal of Mr Gove’s amendments is to scrap the “advisory” part of calculating housing need. This had allowed local authorities to potentially deliver fewer houses than the number calculated via the standard method.

Where the NPPF previously stated that “the outcome of the standard method is an advisory starting point for establishing a housing requirement for the area”, this has now been cut entirely and the target is mandatory.

“Those changes run counter to this government’s ambitions on increasing housing supply,” the consultation document says.

Where the previous document included “exceptional circumstances” such as “demographic characteristics” as potential justifications for alternative calculations, lower numbers will now only be allowed if a local planning authority can show “hard constraints”, such as flood risk areas.

They will also need to have exhausted all other options – including “optimising density, sharing need with neighbouring authorities and… reviewing green belt boundaries”, housing minister Matthew Pennycook said in a letter to stakeholders in the sector.

Another small, but crucial, change is the deletion of “as much… as possible” from a sentence on the goal of meeting housing need, which now simply reads: “The overall aim should be to meet an area’s identified housing need.”

New methods

The updated NPPF will introduce a new method for calculating local authority housing targets to match the scale of new homes Labour aspires to build.

The standard method is “insufficient”, Ms Rayner said, relying on “decade-old population projections” and “an arbitrary ‘urban uplift’ that focuses too heavily on London”, as well as lacking “ambition across large parts of the country”.

The overall yearly target is being raised from 300,000 to around 370,000 homes. Under the new measures, every part of England will have to grow its housing stock by 0.8%, set to broadly correspond to the average rate of housing growth.

There is an added ratchet for areas where homes are particularly unaffordable, such as London and the South East. This uplift is based on “how out of step house prices are with local incomes”, calculated using an affordability multiplier of 0.6%.

The capital will be given a new building target of 80,000 homes a year, lower than the goal set by the previous government, but still well above the 35,000 homes delivered in the city last year.

“With a stable number, reflective of local needs and the way housing markets operate, we will stop debates about the right number of homes for which to plan, ensure targets reflect the way towns and cities actually work, and support authorities to get on with plan-making,” Ms Rayner said.

Meeting rental need

Another key change has been a shift away from homeownership and an emphasis on social rent, in line with Labour’s goal to increase the number of social rent homes during 2025-26, its first full financial year in power.

Several specific references to social rent have been included, such as explicit expectations on social rent delivery, and testing whether there is more that could be done to support developments with mainly affordable tenures – again with a focus on social rent.

“Where a need for affordable housing is identified, planning policies should specify the type of affordable housing required (including the minimum proportion of social rent homes required),” the NPPF now reads.

Homes England and the Greater London Authority are also being asked “to maximise the number of social rent homes” when they allocate their remaining funding.

Several requirements for homeownership have been removed, including the demand that at least 10% of the total number of homes in a major development should be available for affordable homeownership.

It also removes the requirement that a minimum of 25% of affordable housing units secured through developer contributions should be First Homes.

Five-year plans

The reforms stress the importance of up-to-date local plans, with Ms Rayner calling attention to the fact that “just a third of plans have been reviewed and updated in the past five years”.

The government understands that plans might be at different stages around the country, but where there is a “significant gap between the plan and the new local housing need figure”, local authorities will have to “immediately” start on a new plan.

The buffer target for the supply of deliverable sites has been increased from 10% to 20% in areas where there has been “significant under-delivery of housing over the previous three years”.

While this overall approach might “delay” plan adoption, Mr Pennycook said in his letter to stakeholders that the government wanted to “balance keeping plans flowing to adoption with making sure they plan for sufficient housing”, adding that Labour will give financial support to affected authorities.

“While I hope the need will not arise, the deputy prime minister will not hesitate to use her powers of intervention should it be necessary to drive progress – including taking over an authority’s plan-making directly,” Mr Pennycook said.

Larger than local

The government is making an effort to encourage “cross-boundary strategic planning” on a “larger-than-local scale”, to make sure local constraints such as national parks and protected habitats do not act as a barrier to development.

This “universal coverage” of planning will eventually be turned into legislation designed to help metro mayors co-ordinate spatial development strategies.

There are plans to consult on and develop these strategies with the sector before the legislation comes in, including making sure there is enough capability with information like geospatial data.