Vision and Hope – Movement within the updated National Planning Policy Framework

The eagerly anticipated response to the Government’s consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) have been published just in time for the Christmas break. Like many of you, I plan to digest these changes in between servings of sprouts and Baileys while the children play peacefully with their new spinning tops. But I wanted to share my initial reflections on the NPPF revisions and their implications for transport planning and placemaking on our projects for both public and private sector clients.

The overarching aim of the NPPF update is to drive housing delivery, with the Government targeting 1.5 million new homes during this parliamentary term to unlock economic growth. The 2024 revisions reintroduce housing targets based on the standard methodology, requiring many local authorities to revisit their local plans. In doing so many will need to engage with neighbouring authorities and take a more regional view in order to accommodate significantly higher numbers of homes alongside the infrastructure, services and facilities essential for these new communities.

Transport will play a pivotal role in achieving these goals. Notably, the revised NPPF incorporates significant changes within Chapter 9 (Promoting Sustainable transport), further elevating the importance of our work as transport planners, particularly in the early stages of plan making and masterplanning. Interestingly, the changes here go beyond those proposed within the NPPF consultation with the liberal application of ‘vision’ throughout the transport paragraphs.

Vision-led Transport Planning approaches, or whatever pseudonym is applied to these principles, is not a new concept. I can confidently say that we at PJA approached most of our projects, and certainly those in the last 10 or 15 years, with a clear vision and genuine ambition to provide communities in new or improved places with realistic, sustainable travel choices. A successful transport vision encompasses all elements of accessibility: spatial arrangements of land uses, opportunities offered by digital connectivity, and the provision of appropriate movement infrastructure. Critically, such strategies ?must extend beyond site boundaries, on sites large and small, to consider how new developments can positively influence broader movement patterns and contribute to increases in the use of sustainable travel modes within existing settlements.

The relationship between development promoters and existing communities is often adversarial, where resistance to change can stifle or prevent cooperation which could lead to mutually beneficial investment in an area. The updated Framework introduces a new requirement for early community engagement, particularly around transport considerations. This dialogue needs to be meaningful, and we must find better ways of understanding local aspirations and the opportunities to achieve these through development-led funding. Local Authorities could greatly assist in this regard, particularly in maintaining up to date local transport plans, LCWIPs and public transport investment plans. ?

Will Vision-Led Transport Planning Deliver?

The key question remains: will embedding “vision-led” principles in national planning policy accelerate housing delivery and enable greater use of sustainable travel modes? My answer is cautiously optimistic. Achieving this requires a paradigm shift in how plans and masterplans are developed and evaluated, alongside a broader perspective on how built environments shape travel needs and choices. Getting this right will also deliver wider benefits across other key areas of policy around decarbonisation, health and economic prosperity, so we need to put our shoulder behind this.

For vision-led planning to succeed, the industry must establish and adopt robust, repeatable processes which drive us to explore the art of the possible. This involves asking challenging questions of all stakeholders involved in development — from clients and co-consultants to local authorities and communities. These processes should ensure that transport visions are ambitious, coherent, deliverable, and not limited to a narrow focus on movement infrastructure. At its core, vision-led transport planning needs to prioritise the movement of people and goods over motor vehicles, necessitating the use of new tools and methodologies which are better suited to this purpose than traditional highway capacity led approaches, particularly when considering movement at the strategic level.

Breaking old habits

The revised NPPF includes minor updates to transport assessment definitions and highlights forthcoming planning practice guidance to support the application of vision-led principles. Although timelines for this guidance are unspecified, it represents a step toward more robust planning practices. Travel plan definitions have also been strengthened, replacing vague “seeks to deliver” language with clearer requirements for implementation, monitoring, and review.

After decades without a radical shift in planning policy, and in the vacuum left by a lack of assessment guidance, transport planners often revert to comfortable old habits (predict and provide) particularly when working on smaller sites, or in areas with ample highway capacity. ?Here, where the transport challenge is not so great, there is less impetus to be visionary in order to meet the planning tests around access and movement. Given the diverse benefits of more sustainable travel patterns, transport strategies should align with and be tested against a broader range of planning policies including those around healthy and safe communities, vibrant town centres, efficient use of land and the creation of well-design places.

Hopefully, emerging guidance from the DfT and the findings of the Fixing TAs Working Group will start to address these issues, but ultimately it will be for local government leaders and officers, and their communities to raise the bar in order to realise the best outcomes.

“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.” Joel A Barker

Joel A. Barker’s observation resonates deeply. For the NPPF changes to drive meaningful progress in the delivery of sustainable development, we must balance visionary transport planning with decisive actions, resisting the temptation to fall back on “business-as-usual” scenarios focused on car-centric infrastructure to minimise highway congestion in order to provide comfort that our cities will cope should our visions not become reality.

Challenges and Opportunities

At Landor’s “A New Era of Housing Development” conference, my colleague Chris Stack and our Chairman Phil Jones presented PJA’s work on vision-led movement strategies. Phil noted that the NPPF’s references to congestion (now in paragraph 115) and the severe impact tests often hinder visionary approaches, as they necessitate contingency planning for less desirable outcomes. This approach diverts funds toward “predict and provide” safety nets instead of proactive investments in sustainable infrastructure like cycleways and bus routes which may have been the difference between the success and failure of a transport strategy.

Addressing this paradox is critical to fully embracing vision-led, scenario-based transport planning approaches that navigate uncertainty and possible future outcomes. Be in no doubt, we have always dealt with uncertainty in transport planning. George Box is famously quoted as saying “All models are wrong, some are useful” which is a universal truism, but if we are only asking questions about the severity of the impacts upon drivers then the answers our models are giving are not useful. ?

The revised NPPF offers additional flexibility in applying the severe impact test, clarifying that judgments should consider the impact of mitigation in “all reasonable future scenarios.” However, the glossary’s definition of “reasonable future scenarios” remains ambiguous, leaving open questions about who determines what is “reasonable” and whether such scenarios can truly drive the transformative change needed.

Green Belt Considerations

One widely debated aspect of the NPPF revisions is the role of Green Belt sites in meeting housing targets. The updated framework introduces definitions for “Grey Belt” land and “Golden Rules” governing development on such sites. From a transport perspective, the NPPF now explicitly states that decisions to remove sites from the Green Belt should be made with consideration of paragraphs 110 and 115, focusing on sustainability by minimising travel needs and providing genuine multimodal transport options.

By their nature, greenbelt sites are often remote from existing centres and transport interchanges, requiring careful consideration of how to design and deliver accessibility in these areas. Can we and do we provide sustainable connections to existing centres, or do these developments need to be brought forward at greater scales which can provide a range of services and facilities allowing trips to be internalised and more easily undertaken by sustainable travel modes?

“Roads, we don’t need roads where we are going”

To meet the Government’s ambitious housing targets over the next five years, sustainable travel must become the default choice for more people. A business-as-usual approach will only exacerbate highway capacity constraints, leading to further Green Belt encroachment to provide land for significant scale roads and car parking.

Roads take a long time to construct, have questionable economic benefits and lead to behaviours that have negative impacts on our finances, health and wellbeing. If the delivery of 1.5 million new homes relies on the delivery of new highway capacity as we have done historically, the target will not be met in 5 years, and probably not in 10 years. Investment in active travel and public transport is the only way we can come close to achieving this target, this is reflected in the changes at paragraph 115 where the requirement to simply promote sustainable travel modes has been replaced with a need to prioritise them within the transport vision for the site. ?

Unlike Doc Brown, I think we will still need roads in the future, but hopefully less new ones. Where we do need them and other major transport infrastructure, the revised Framework (para. 27) places greater emphasis on collaboration between authorities and with other bodies responsible for infrastructure delivery to make sure plans for delivery and investment are aligned with strategic policies. In transport this will be a significant challenge, particularly where local plan policies rely upon improvements to the strategic road or rail network.

By adopting vision-led planning, we can create communities that prioritise sustainable mobility, ultimately delivering the housing, economic growth, and environmental outcomes envisioned in the NPPF.

In conclusion

The revised NPPF is not perfect, and in my view is still not ambitious enough with regards to delivering more sustainable movement patterns. But it provides a very good opportunity to reshape the way we plan for housing and transport. By embracing vision-led accessibility planning and prioritising sustainable mobility, we can address the challenges of decarbonisation, public health, and economic growth while creating vibrant, inclusive communities.

However, the success of these changes hinges on our ability to move beyond incremental adjustments and embrace transformative thinking in the planning process. As George Washington Carver wisely observed,

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

Our task is to ensure that vision is paired with decisive action, fostering hope for a future where sustainable development not only meets the governments somewhat arbitrary housing targets but also enriches the lives of all who call these communities home.

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