Labour would take “decisive and early” action to reverse recently introduced changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and would introduce both “mandatory targets that bite on individual local planning authorities” and an “effective mechanism for cross-boundary strategic planning”, the party’s housing spokesman has said.

During a debate on planning reform in the House of Commons, shadow housing and planning minister Matthew Pennycook also promised that an incoming Labour government would not scrap the current discretionary system for determining applications. 

Outlining the opposition’s latest thinking on planning reform, he said recently introduced changes to the NPPF had been a “grubby concession” to mutinous government back bench MPs and “nothing less than a woeful abdication of responsibility”, which “must be undone”.  

Pennycook said that many councils had taken advantage of the NPPF revisions, which have softened the standard method for calculating housing need and the housing delivery test, to “reverse ferret” and plan for less housing than implied in their local targets. 

He said: “A Labour government will act decisively and early to ensure that it is undone so that we once again have a planning system geared towards meeting housing need in full - that is absolutely a red line for us.”