Stewards and facilitators: Navigating heritage under the new NPPF

In the Government's own words, a key driver of the new NPPF is to create a 'clear, rules-based planning system', increasing certainty of outcome, boosting housing supply, and unlocking economic growth. This has precipitated a reorganisation of the NPPF into distinct 'plan-making' and 'decision-making' policies, and recalibration of its language and emphasis to align with the Government's pro-growth agenda.

For the heritage sector, the new NPPF lands at a time of serious challenge, with rising costs and funding cuts leaving the historic environment in a precarious position. The Heritage Alliance's 2024 On the Brink report highlighted a 46.5% drop in local authority expenditure on the historic environment from 2009/10 to 2021/22, alongside a consistent drop in DCMS grant-in-aid funding for cultural organisations. With 4,891 historic buildings and places listed on England's Heritage at Risk Register, 'unlocking growth' must include facilitating the sustainable use and reuse of our built heritage as part of the solution. In this context, the role of planning and heritage policy is twofold: protecting what is an invaluable and irreplicable resource, whilst supporting its evolution and adaptation so that it has a sustainable future.

'Conserving and enhancing the historic environment', formerly Paragraphs 203-221, now takes the form of ten distinct policies - three for plan-making and seven for decision-making. The diagram below maps the evolution of Chapter 20 paragraph-by-paragraph, tracking each provision of the 2024 NPPF through to the corresponding policy within the 2026 Framework, and also identifies where new elements have been added with no 2024 equivalent.

What is clear, and widely understood, is that this goes beyond a reshuffle of existing policy - but what does it actually mean?

The reorganisation of the chapter into 'plan-making' and 'decision-making' policies is a significant change, and also serves to clarify the roles and responsibilities of plan-makers, decision-makers, and applicants within the planning process.

There is much greater detail on plan-making.  Paragraphs, H-1 to H-3 now provide clearer guidance to LPAs, with an emphasis on their role as stewards of the historic environment. Development plans must now be supported by a positive strategy for the historic environment, informed by a proportionate assessment and defined requirements relating to local lists, conservation areas and World Heritage Sites. In effect, the role of the LPA is to set the parameters for heritage projects before a scheme comes forward.

That responsibility then tracks through to applicants. HE-5 now requires all proposals affecting heritage assets to be accompanied by an assessment of effect on significance emphasising the role of applicants to work with the parameters set by the LPA and clearly demonstrate how the significance of an asset may be affected by new development, thereby facilitating positive change.

In practice, this reflects what is already commonplace in the sector with the bigger impact on the day-to-day application of the NPPF being in the framing of the assessment itself. HE-5 introduces four tiers of effect which assessments must now work through: positive effect, no effect, harm (including degree of harm), or total loss. The removal of the familiar 'less than substantial harm' terminology is notable however, whilst the term has disappeared, the need to distinguish between different degrees of harm – and weigh this against benefits – has not. It remains to be seen whether this will ultimately change the substance of assessments, or whether the same spectrum of judgement will be expressed through a slightly different organising framework.

The revised text makes explicit the long-standing principle that it is the 'effect on a heritage asset’s significance rather than the scale of the development which should be considered'. The emphasis on assessment and justification of significance reaffirms the importance of good baselining at the start of every project – in terms of both applicant and LPA expertise. Understanding the significance of an asset is fundamental to making the case for any proposals, and it is not possible to produce a proposal that satisfies the NPPF heritage tests without this first step.

The introduction of a positive effect as a defined assessment outcome in HE-5 is followed-up in HE-6 and HE-7, which state that proposals with a positive effect on a heritage asset "should be supported" - a clear expression of the government's growth and development agenda, where this has been clearly justified in line with the heritage tests.

The revised document also gives greater recognition to the potential benefits of sustainable reuse and adaptation. In HE-6, securing the long-term reuse of vacant or underused listed buildings and improving energy efficiency are clearly identified as 'important public benefits'.

The message is clear: heritage should not be a barrier to good development, and development is itself a mechanism through which to secure the long-term conservation and use of heritage assets.

Notwithstanding the pro-development tone of the new Framework, the revised text also introduces new layers of protection and, in some areas, greater specificity.

Non-designated heritage assets

HE-7 introduces a new substantial harm test for non-designated assets that did not exist in the 2024 document, which only required a 'balanced judgement' to be made about significance, scale of harm, and benefits. The revised text extends protection to say that substantial harm or total loss of the significance of a non-designated asset should only be supported where this is outweighed by the benefits of the proposal.

The implementation of this across different LPAs will be particularly interesting. Without Heritage England’'s statutory consultation role for non-designated heritage assets, there is potential for greater variation in how significance and degrees of harm as assessed, and in what benefits are considered sufficient to outweigh them. This comes at a time when HE's statutory duty is also being reduced for Grade II listed buildings and Conservation Areas, placing a greater responsibility on LPAs to make heritage judgements without external guidance. The Government has acknowledged the resulting concern over LPA heritage capacity, committing a further £48 million in capacity and capability funding over the Spending Review period alongside measures to increase planning fee income.

World Heritage Sites

HE-8 introduces a new requirement to assess the impact of development on both the significance and Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of a World Heritage Site (WHS), including any cumulative impacts. This represents a more explicit articulation of the relationship between the UNESCO World Heritage regime and the English planning system.

Of particular interest is therefore the corresponding relationship between OUV and a broader definition of 'significance' in planning terms. The practical challenge will be to reconcile the NPPF's requirement to assess effects on both significance and OUV with the UNESCO approach to impact assessment, particularly where the two frameworks employ different terminology or approaches to defining and assessing value. The requirement to consider cumulative impacts and implications of the relevant WHS management plan also introduces a broader assessment framework than previously expressed through national planning policy.

The new Chapter 20 places greater emphasis on plan-making and the role of LPAs in establishing the significance and value of the historic environment, alongside a stronger expectation that applicants clearly demonstrate the effects of development – including positive effects – on that significance.

At the same time, the revised chapter is more explicitly supportive of development which delivers positive heritage outcomes, particularly where this enables sustainable reuse and adaptation of historic buildings. However, there are new requirements and greater specificity required, which will need to be tested through implementation.

The coming months will be important in translating policy changes into practice. Updates to the Planning Practice Guidance and HE's Good Practice Advice Notes will support this understanding. Beyond this, early planning decisions and appeals are likely to be particularly important in resolving areas of uncertainty, testing the interpretation of new wording, and establishing how the different elements of the revised framework are to be balanced in practice.