A great deal of heat & perhaps some light has been generated over the NPPF proposals by Planning Ministers.Even a Daily Telegraph reporter (who have been leading the charge against the NPPF) admitted at Party Conference in Manchester that there was a line the paper was taking, which did not always bear close scrutiny.However whatever the reality of concerns expressed over the NPPF being a developers charter to concrete over England's green and pleasant pastures, Ministers in the past few days have been at pains to underline the fact that this is not the case.One interesting angle on the implementation of the NPPF will be a transition period, which has to be long enough to ensure that local authorities have time to implement Core Strategies where they do not currently exist.It is clear that the message from the LGA & local authority representation has hit home & there is likely to be more clarity around what the NPPF actually means for localities.If localism is to mean anything it ought to ensure that communities and their local authorities should have greater power to plan for appropriate growth where it is needed and wanted. It is not right that developers can take advantage of a presumption in favour of development & recent call in decisions by Ministers support that view.So the key is having in place a robust Core Strategy, even where there is no Green Belt policy in place. development schemes will then be measured against an adopted Core Strategy.The ability to do strategic planning locally is key to the success of the localism agenda.
