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Council told it could get local plan deadline extension due to NPPF delay
Government officials suggested that a council threatened with intervention over the slow progress of its local plan could receive an extension deadline because of delays to national planning guidance, its leader has claimed.
Conservative-run Runnymede Borough Council was one of 15 councils shamed by housing secretary Sajid Javid in November last year for its failure to bring forward a draft local plan.
He ordered the councils to write to him by 31 January with reasons for their late homework and a progress update or face the government taking control of writing their local plans.
In a letter to Mr Javid seen by Inside Housing, Nick Prescot, leader of Runnymede Borough Council, said: “I note that government has not updated the NPPF [National Planning Policy Framework] in accordance with your own 1 April 2018 anticipated timetable, and your officials have made a suggestion through our officers hinting Runnymede could consider a delay in the submission of our plan because of the delay in the ‘new’ NPPF.”
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The NPPF, published in 2012, sets out the government’s planning policies and is intended to act as the starting point for councils to draw up their local plans.
Ministers previously said that a consultation draft of a revised NPPF would appear in early 2018, but Melanie Dawes, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government told MPs in December it would be published “just before Easter or thereabouts”.
The delay has also cast doubt on when the government’s standardised method for calculating housing need will come into force.
A spokesperson for the ministry said: “We have written to 15 planning authorities, including Runnymede, and started the formal process of intervention for failing to produce a local plan.
“The council has responded to us and we will be deciding on next steps shortly.”
Mr Prescot’s letter is attached below.
