A new planning framework: what could it mean for Leicestershire’s countryside?

The Government published a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in August, setting out significant changes to the way decisions about housing, infrastructure and development will be made across England.

For CPRE Leicestershire, the important question is what these changes will mean on the ground: for our towns and villages, the countryside between them, valued landscapes and the ability of local communities to influence how their areas grow.

The answer is mixed.

There are some important improvements which CPRE has campaigned for nationally, but there are also changes that could substantially increase development pressure across rural counties such as Leicestershire.

Some important progress

CPRE contributed extensively to the Government’s consultation on the NPPF, drawing on evidence from branches across England and responses from supporters.

That campaigning has helped secure some welcome changes.

The new framework strengthens the emphasis on making better use of previously developed – or brownfield – land and introduces tougher and more transparent requirements around development viability. This matters because viability arguments can too often result in affordable housing and other community benefits being reduced after planning permission has been granted.

There are also improvements to environmental assessment within the emerging system of Spatial Development Strategies, alongside additional safeguards relating to peatland and resilience to wildfire.

Nationally, changes affecting the Green Belt are more complicated. Strategic assessment will be required before Green Belt land is released and enhanced affordable housing requirements have been retained where development does take place. These are useful safeguards, but they sit alongside wider changes that could make development within the Green Belt easier in some circumstances.

However, Leicestershire itself has no Green Belt. When Green Belts were being established around many English towns and cities from the 1950s onwards, that option was not taken up around Leicester. The consequences of that decision remain highly relevant today.

Development has progressively spread into the countryside around Leicester and many of the county’s towns and villages, increasing the risk of settlements growing towards one another and gradually losing their separate identities. This contrasts with neighbouring areas such as parts of Rushcliffe and North Warwickshire, where Green Belt designation has provided a longstanding strategic constraint on outward urban expansion.

That makes the protection of the remaining countryside between Leicestershire’s settlements particularly important.

Growing pressure on the countryside

Of greater concern is the continued emphasis on centrally determined housing requirements and the pressure this could place on greenfield land.

CPRE has consistently argued that England needs more homes, particularly genuinely affordable homes. But simply increasing housing numbers does not guarantee that the homes being built are the homes local people actually need.

Nor should meeting housing targets come at the expense of good planning.

Here in Leicestershire, we already see the consequences when development is considered separately from the infrastructure needed to support it. New housing needs to be accompanied by sufficient schools, healthcare, public transport, utilities, walking and cycling infrastructure and other essential services.

Development should create sustainable communities, rather than simply add houses.

There is also a wider question about where development should take place. Continuing to expand settlements outwards onto greenfield land can reinforce car dependency, particularly where new development is remote from jobs, services and good public transport.

Traffic growth cannot simply be addressed indefinitely by increasing highway capacity. Apart from the practical and environmental constraints involved, additional road capacity can itself encourage further car-dependent development and travel.

The new planning framework increasingly recognises the need for a different approach: establishing a vision for how places should grow and directing development towards genuinely sustainable locations, where people have access to a good range of everyday services and realistic alternatives to travelling by car.

For Leicestershire, that should mean much greater emphasis on reusing and redeveloping underused land within Leicester and the county’s towns, together with appropriate higher-density development in locations capable of supporting it.

Making better use of land that is already developed can help meet housing needs while reducing the amount of countryside that has to be lost.

Development around railway stations

The new NPPF places considerable emphasis on development around railway stations, but this needs to be understood carefully in the Leicestershire context.

In principle, concentrating development around genuinely well-connected transport hubs can make good planning sense. But the policy emphasis is not simply about the presence of railway infrastructure. The quality, frequency and connectivity of the service are fundamental to whether rail can realistically reduce dependence on the private car.

Leicestershire has relatively few railway stations and the level of service varies considerably between them. Only a small number benefit from Intercity services, while several have much more limited services. A station in a rural or semi-rural location therefore cannot automatically be treated as justification for substantial development.

The test must be whether a location is genuinely sustainable: whether residents can realistically reach employment, education, healthcare, shops and other everyday services without being dependent upon a car.

CPRE Leicestershire will therefore be looking closely at proposals that seek to justify substantial development primarily because of proximity to a railway station. A station should form part of a genuinely sustainable place; it should not become a convenient justification for further greenfield sprawl.

A different approach to transport and growth

This is part of a wider change that will be important for Leicestershire.

Historically, traffic growth and development have too often been approached by forecasting additional vehicle movements and then seeking additional highway capacity to accommodate them. But continually expanding road capacity is neither a sustainable nor ultimately achievable response to continuing traffic growth.

The emerging national approach places greater emphasis on vision-led planning: deciding what sort of places we want to create and then planning land use and transport together to achieve that vision.

For CPRE Leicestershire, that should mean locating substantially more development where people can reach jobs, schools, shops and services by walking, cycling and good-quality public transport, rather than creating new communities whose residents have little practical alternative to driving.

Policies TR3 and TR6 in the new NPPF could be particularly important in determining how these principles are applied, and we will be watching closely to see how local planning and highway authorities interpret them.

Data centres and major infrastructure

The treatment of data centres and other strategically important infrastructure is another area we will be watching carefully.

The digital economy undoubtedly requires new infrastructure, but its scale can have significant consequences for landscape, energy and water demand, biodiversity and local communities.

Leicestershire is already experiencing substantial pressure from major infrastructure and large-scale development, including logistics development and proposals associated with strategic transport corridors.

National economic importance should not become a reason to disregard environmental impacts or avoid proper consideration of whether development is in the right place.

Supporting a resilient countryside

There are more positive measures for agriculture, including additional support for on-farm reservoirs and measures intended to help farmers respond to drought and an increasingly unpredictable climate.

CPRE welcomes recognition that farming, water resilience, food security and the environment need to be considered together.

However, short-term funding cannot replace a coherent long-term approach to helping agriculture adapt to climate change while protecting soils, water, biodiversity and the landscapes that make our countryside distinctive.

What happens next?

The new NPPF arrives at a particularly important moment for Leicestershire.

The current round of Local Plans proposes substantial further development, much of it involving greenfield land and outward expansion of existing settlements. At the same time, local government reorganisation and the emerging strategic planning system are likely to change significantly the way future growth across Leicester and Leicestershire is planned.

That creates both a challenge and an opportunity.

Decisions being made through Local Plans now could embed patterns of car-dependent greenfield development into the planning pipeline for many years. CPRE Leicestershire believes planning authorities should therefore avoid locking in further unsustainable sprawl where there are reasonable opportunities to pursue a better strategic approach.

The emerging system should provide an opportunity to look across administrative boundaries and consider properly how housing, employment, transport, infrastructure and environmental protection fit together across Leicester and Leicestershire as a whole.

For our branch, that makes our work more important, not less.

Over the coming months we will continue scrutinising Local Plans and major development proposals across the county, working with parish councils, community groups and our volunteers to argue for development that is genuinely sustainable and appropriate to its location.

CPRE Leicestershire is not opposed to development. We recognise the need for new homes, infrastructure and economic investment.

But we also believe that good planning means putting the right development in the right places.

That means prioritising brownfield and underused urban land wherever possible; making efficient use of land through appropriate densities; providing genuinely affordable homes; locating development where people have realistic alternatives to the private car; ensuring infrastructure keeps pace with development; protecting important landscapes and the countryside between our settlements; and giving communities a meaningful voice in decisions about the future of the places in which they live.

The new NPPF contains some welcome steps in that direction. It also creates significant new challenges.

Our job now is to make sure that, as the new policies begin to influence decisions across Leicestershire, the countryside and the communities who care about it continue to have a strong voice.