Requirement for 20% extra housing land may be dropped from NPPF, say reports

Reports also suggest that a transition period of up to two years will be included in the plans to allow local authorities to update their local development plans so that they comply with the new policy.

The revised draft of the NPPF will contain a policy explicitly requiring local planning authorities to favour development on brownfield sites over greenfield sites, reports say. The document could contain a revised definition of "sustainable development" that takes environmental concerns into consideration.

“We should have a document that allows planning of the right development in the right place. The draft document did not do that. Let’s get a document that does not have growth at any price” Communities and Local Government Parliamentary Committee chairman Clive Betts told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Critics of the draft NPPF have included the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has called for the retention of the policy of encouraging development on brownfield, rather than greenfield, sites. It has also called for an amendment to the definition of sustainable development so that "environmental limits are respected, rather than giving primacy to economic development".

The current draft of the NPPF was published by the Government on 25 July 2011 and provides, amongst many other policies, a presumption in favour of sustainable development and a policy that local planning authorities should identify sites suitable for five years' worth of housing supply against their housing requirements and, on top of this, "an additional allowance of at least 20% to ensure choice and competition in the market for land".