Politics Home Article | The backwards step hidden in the Government’s latest planning reforms

The changes are intended to make the planning system simpler and clearer, and for the most part are a welcome addition to the Government’s drive to facilitate more housebuilding and infrastructure development. However, the omission of some crucial wording relating to mineral planning could unintentionally undermine these ambitions.

Guidance on ‘facilitating the sustainable use of minerals’ can be found on page 49 of the draft text, and is rightly included under the broad heading of ‘delivering homes and supporting growth’, with a presumption in favour of sustainable development applied to mineral extraction outside of settlements.

This is welcome, and the right thing to do for the Government’s ambitions. The mineral products sector is the largest supplier to the UK construction sector, producing 400 million tonnes of essential materials and products for construction uses every year, including almost 200 million tonnes of indigenous crushed rock, sand, and gravel extracted from quarries across the country. In doing so, the sector directly employs nearly 90,000 highly skilled, permanent jobs, often in rural locations.

However, in the apparent pursuit of brevity, the Government has eliminated some important references to well-established policy principles that are in the current NPPF.

Maintaining a sufficient supply of minerals to provide the infrastructure, buildings, energy and goods that the country needs is no longer described as “essential” in the draft text. The need for mineral planning authorities to plan for a “steady and adequate supply” of aggregates is also gone.

The word ‘essential’ is an important and accurate description, and puts meat on the bones of the ‘substantial weight’ to be given to the benefits of mineral extraction.  It is also a counterweight to the tendency of council planning committees to reject appropriate applications for new mineral extraction, often leading to appeals, which are costly and time-consuming for all involved. This is often seen as discouraging businesses from investing in applications for new extraction altogether.

This is particularly important when the updated NPPF includes specific references to ‘critical and growth minerals’, such as rare earths. Downplaying the essentiality of ‘other’ minerals like crushed rock, sand, and gravel which are not included in that category implies, wrongly, that they are not essential for growth and risks making the planning system more adverse for them.

Likewise, the words ‘steady and adequate’ are more than just a turn of phrase which can be cut if the overall gist remains. They have been an accepted principle in mineral planning for decades, and have been cited in decisions and local plans to justify allocating sites for, and permitting in a timely manner, new mineral extraction and ensuring that the supply of materials is not disrupted.

It has arguably never been more important to preserve these explicit references in the NPPF. Already, a combination of unnecessary cost, delay, uncertainty, and bureaucracy in the planning system has driven a decline in permitted aggregates reserves, despite sluggish sales due to low construction levels.

For every 100 tonnes of crushed rock the industry sells, it only obtains permission to extract a new 33 tonnes. The figure for sand and gravel is 61 tonnes, but the existing level of sand and gravel reserves is already much lower, and individual sites are shorter lived.

If the Government’s planning reforms are successful in driving more construction activity, but there is no corresponding uptick in new quarry permissions, this squeeze on supply will intensify and, in the medium term, could hamper the Government’s ability to deliver the houses and infrastructure this country needs.

While there are some positive steps in the updated NPPF which should help facilitate more mineral extraction, the Government should take the simple step of reinstating the “essential” and “steady and adequate” wording to make sure its own work is not undone.

But that should be a first step. The Government can do even more to ensure the updated NPPF supports the mineral products sector to continue supplying, on a long-term, sustainable basis, the foundations for the construction boom ministers want to see.

For example, the draft text already includes a very positive line requiring that particular importance be given to ‘facilitating the exploration and extraction or processing of critical and growth minerals’ when assessing the benefits of mineral development. This should be extended to all minerals of national and local importance, including construction aggregates and industrial minerals, rather than being reserved for that specific category.

Secondly, the draft text currently only expects that spatial development strategies (SDSs) make provision for mineral supply ‘where appropriate’. This caveat should be deleted, and SDSs should not be able to opt out of planning for the supply of minerals to enable the growth and development they exist to drive. Those authorities that don’t have mineral resources within their areas will be wholly dependent on the supply of minerals from elsewhere to meet their ambitions.

Just as the Government’s planning reform drive is far from over, there is more that can be done beyond the updated NPPF to put mineral planning on a clearer, more consistent, and more sustainable footing. But ministers should start by simply correcting the backwards steps currently in the draft document, and taking a couple more steps forward.