The draft revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) incorporates
a number of policy proposals previously consulted on in the Housing White Paper
and the Planning for the Right Homes in the Right Places consultation.
As it stands, the draft revision of
the NPPF appears to keep the existing heritage policy largely intact despite a
little fiddling with text here and there but does include the moving of
paragraphs and the addition of some new headings. There are a couple of notable
changes however as follows.
What was paragraph 132 (now paragraph
189 in the proposed document) now includes additional text confirming that when
considering the impact of development on the significance of a designated
heritage asset, great weight should be given to the asset’s conservation ‘irrespective of the degree of potential
harm to its significance’.
The proposed document also requires that any
harm, even if it is ‘less than substantial’, should be given ‘great weight’ in
the decision-making process.
This seems to echo and respond to the
various Court judgments (notably the Barnwell Manor Wind Energy Ltd. case) and
better aligns the NPPF with other statute and case law regarding listed
buildings and conservation areas. Maybe this will provide extra traction for
decision makers to consider sections 66 and 72 of the Planning (Listed
Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 which have always required ‘special
regard’ and ‘special attention’, respectively, to be paid to the desirability
of preserving listed buildings and preserving or enhancing the character or
appearance of conservation areas.
There is no longer the requirement
of ‘securing its optimum viable use’ contained within the document, when
dealing with less that substantial harm, which will go some way to negate the
debates between developers and planning officers around what actually is the ‘optimum
viable use’. Invariably there is often one party seeking the least harmful proposal
for the heritage asset and the other seeing the better profit margin.
Unfortunately, there is no
additional clarity around what is a genuine ‘public benefit’ when considering a
proposal that involves less than substantial harm to a heritage assets. I guess
these debates will continue unabated.
From a personal perspective, it
would have been beneficial if the drafters had taken the opportunity to
acknowledge and address the not insignificant range within ‘less than
substantial’ harm which stretches from almost negligible harm to that which
hits the threshold of ‘substantial’ harm.
Also, the definition of ‘historic
environment’ has apparently been deleted from Annex 2 (Glossary) without
explanation but perhaps the definition was considered to be too general?
So what lies ahead? Should the
proposed draft be accepted, the main task will be to assimilate the newly
numbered paragraphs and nuances of the altered texts.
Personally, I do not believe that
these proposed text changes will introduce anything ground breaking for professional
heritage practitioners who have and continue to work on the basis of doing the
best for our heritage assets. I appreciate there are some great developers of
heritage assets out there but maybe this will add some weight and traction to
local authorities to encourage those other developers to come forward with more
appropriate schemes.
In truth, we’ll see what comes
forward in the final publication but I suspect that it will remain for those
professional practitioners involved to wrestle with the existing and future issues.
Full details at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/draft-revised-national-planning-policy-framework
