What does the pledge mean? 

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is a document which sets out the government’s planning policies for England, and outlines how these are “expected to be applied”. 

Since it was first published in 2012, it’s been updated and revised regularly by previous governments to reflect their planning policies. It was last updated by Rishi Sunak’s government in December 2023, when, among other changes, housing targets were made advisory, rather than mandatory. (Then-housing secretary Michael Gove had announced his intention to make this change in December 2022.) 

In its manifesto, Labour pledged to “immediately update the National Policy Planning Framework to undo damaging Conservative changes, including restoring mandatory housing targets”. (This appears to be a typo, and refer to the National Planning Policy Framework instead.)The wording of Labour’s pledge doesn’t make clear exactly which specific “Conservative changes” it plans to “undo”—we don’t know if this only includes changes made in 2023, or other changes made by previous Conservative or Conservative-led governments. We asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) about this in October 2024.

We’re also not sure what “immediately” means in this context. Changes to policy don’t often happen overnight, but this term suggests the government was promising to enact these changes well before the end of the current parliament. We’ve asked for further clarification on this too. 

And we’re also not clear if the pledge to “update” the NPPF refers simply to the drafting of a new framework, or its adoption and implementation. 

What progress has been made?

We’ve rated this pledge as “appears on track” because progress seems to have been made, even though there’s some uncertainty still over some of the details of what was promised.

In a speech on 8 July 2024, three days after forming a government, the chancellor Rachel Reeves said work was “underway” on planning reform, and that the government would reform the NPPF and consult on “a new growth-focused approach to the planning system before the end of the month”. 

On 30 July 2024, the government presented a new draft of the NPPF, with a consultation on this draft running until 24 September 2024. 

In this draft the government proposed a number of new changes to the December 2023 version of the NPPF and reversed some changes which had been made in the December 2023 version, including the decision to make housing targets “advisory”. This had been a controversial change that gave councils more leeway in hitting local targets—some, including the cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, warned it could make it more difficult for the then-government to meet its national target of building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.

The Labour government’s first draft of the NPPF has not yet been signed off, and the results of the consultation haven’t been announced, so we don’t know at this stage if the final version of the new NPPF will definitely include mandatory housing targets or reverse other changes made to the NPPF in December 2023. 

In July, the government said it “will respond to the consultation and publish NPPF revisions before the end of the year”, but MHCLG has not confirmed a more specific date for this.