The AONB has responded to the draft National Planning Policy Framework, which could have significant impacts on future development within this nationally important protected landscape.
In summary while the AONB has some sympathy with Government’s view that the planning system should be easier to understand and to implement. It felt that the proposed draft appears to reduce a system that copes with considerable variation and subtlety to one that is a rather blunt and insensitive instrument. It appears, however, to this AONB that the recent experience of redrafting planning policy statements, such as PPS5, into much shorter documents could be the way to achieve Government’s aim whilst maintaining the level of useful guidance and detailed and subtle distinctions necessary for a sensitive planning system. Such an approach could mean that a new National Planning Framework could be a shorter document itself, supported by succinct comment and new style PPSs.
This AONB has also contributed to the responses to this consultation from the National Association of AONBs and we commended that response within our own.
