Position statement: Putting health at the heart of NPPF reform

The Quality of Life Foundation’s initial response to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) December 2025 Consultation

The Quality of Life Foundation welcomes the government’s commitment to addressing the housing crisis. However, we believe that growth alone is not a measure of success. Success is measured by the quality of the lives lived within the homes and neighbourhoods we create.

Having a decent, affordable home in a safe, well-designed, and resilient neighbourhood is the foundation of a happy, healthy life. Yet, as our 2024–2029 strategy highlights, the UK currently faces a health and wellbeing crisis, with a 19.7-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas.

While the December 2025 Draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) introduces helpful tools for creating healthy places (in relation to community facilities and hot food takeaways, for example), we have significant concerns that the overarching mandate for health has been diluted in favour of speed and productivity.

Below we summarise some of our initial thoughts on reading the draft:

A welcome focus on long-term public interest

It is encouraging to see the draft articulate a clear purpose for the planning system that explicitly references the “long-term public interest, including the needs of future generations.”

  • Our position: Shifting the horizon of planning beyond immediate delivery to consider the enduring legacy of our built environment is a significant step forward. We look forward to seeing this “public interest” further defined to include health equity. Making this link explicit will transform an important principle into a practical safeguard, ensuring that the legacy of our built environment is one of lasting health and resilience.

Health must be the golden thread, not a postscript

We are concerned that the high-level requirement for the planning system to “enable and support healthy lives, through both promoting good health and preventing ill-health” has been deprioritised in the draft’s core principles.

  • Our position: National policy must move beyond promoting health to securing it. Health equity should be a mandatory, statutory duty for all plan-makers. 

Community agency: restoring a sense of control

A core pillar of our Framework is that people need a sense of control over their local environment to thrive.

  • Our position: The shift towards a “faster, more rules-based” system must not come at the expense of meaningful community participation. “Default yes” approaches must include robust safeguards that empower local residents to shape the specific social infrastructure and green spaces their unique community requires. Engagement is not a blocker; it is a prerequisite for long-term community resilience.

Stewardship: planning for the long term

The planning system currently focuses almost entirely on the point of consent. But we know that once a development is built, the quality of life within it often deteriorates due to a lack of maintenance and social support.

  • Our position: Stewardship plans should be a non-negotiable requirement for all significant developments. These must move beyond simple maintenance to encompass long-term governance and funding to ensure community hubs and social infrastructure is cared for in perpetuity, preventing well-designed places from becoming social deserts once a developer leaves a site.

Summary

The Quality of Life Foundation believes the NPPF should deliver a system that is pro-health and pro-community. We must build 1.5 million homes, but they must be homes that help people live longer, happier, and more connected lives.

We will be diving deeper into the proposed text in the coming weeks, and will put together a full response to the government’s consultation before the deadline of 10 March 2026.