Heritage policy under the spotlight: Key discussions from Cornerstone’s NPPF roundtable
Last week, Cornerstone Barristers hosted a roundtable discussion on the heritage policies within the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The event was jointly chaired by Emma Dring, Ben Du Feu with a special guest appearance from Gail Stoten, Executive Director (Heritage) at Pegasus Group.
The room was full of heritage professionals from both the private sector and public bodies, including Historic England.
As with other events in our series on the draft NPPF, there was a lively discussion on the key changes, how the new policies are likely to operate in practice and the opportunities and challenges they may throw up. This is unquestionably the biggest set of proposed changes to heritage policy since the NPPF was first published in 2012. There was lots to discuss.
The key topics included:
- the current understanding of heritage policy shaped by recent case law
- the perceived problems with existing policy
- the role for heritage in plan making in the draft NPPF
- the emphasis on the potential for development to have positive heritage effects
- the change from ‘great’ to ‘substantial’ weight
- the change from ‘less than substantial harm’ to ‘harm’
- the definition of ‘substantial harm’
- the loss of optimum viable use (OVU)
- the list of ‘important public benefits’
- the treatment of non-designated assets
- the new heritage balances and how they will interact with other decision making balances in the framework.
