The Housing and Planning Bill, published earlier this month, fleshes out the pledge in chancellor George Osborne’s July Fixing the Foundations productivity plan, to grant "automatic permission in principle" for brownfield sites registered by town halls as suitable for housing. The impact assessment, published alongside the bill, says the government expects that it "will take time for full implementation to occur, as brownfield registers do not currently exist and the measure will apply to site allocations in future plans and not retrospectively". More.
Housing schemes of up to 500 units 'functionally needed' to progress major infrastructure schemes or 'functionally linked' to such schemes will be allowed under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime, the government has announced. More.
Calls to strengthen strategic planning arrangements and to tackle a lack of local authority resources for plan-making are included in submissions to a heavyweight panel convened by the government to look at ways to streamline the local plan process. More.
London mayor Boris Johnson has published a masterplan for east of the capital that contains plans for more than 200,000 new homes over the next 20 years. More.
Proposals to expand the Lake District National Park and Yorkshire Dales National Park so that they will only be separated by a 'thin' road and rail corridor have been approved by environment secretary Liz Truss. More.
Two devolution deals for the North East of England have been signed which will include strategic planning powers and the power for new elected mayors to create development corporations to drive forward regeneration projects. More.
Proposals for a 500-home urban extension onto a North Yorkshire market town have been refused by councillors after officers warned over the impact the scheme would have on an area of outstanding natural beauty and its lack of affordable housing provision. More.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson has granted planning permission for a 97-home mixed-use development, overturning the London Borough of Wandsworth's refusal of the scheme on the grounds of of its height, bulk and design quality. More.
An inspector has agreed to suspend the examination of a Warwickshire authority's local plan, after previously recommending that the council voluntarily withdraw the document from examination or receive a report recommending non-adoption. More.
Communities secretary Greg Clark has refused planning permission for two wind turbines at a farm in Staffordshire, despite a planning inspector's recommendation that the scheme be approved. More.
