Why the new NPPF must plan for people, not just units

Words by Emma Cooke, head of external affairs. 

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is often described in the dry language of “targets,” “uplifts,” and “statutory duties.” But for those of us who live in the results of these decisions, it is something much more visceral. It is the blueprint for our health, the architect of our social lives, and the gatekeeper of our quality of life.

As the government consults on its December 2025 draft, the central mission is clear: growth. 

But at the Quality of Life Foundation, we have a question: What kind of growth? If we build 1.5 million homes but neglect the health and social fabric of the people who live in them, we aren’t building a future – we are building a legacy of inequality.

The vanishing thread of health

In recent years, we’ve fought to see health integrated into every level of planning. Yet, in this new draft, that thread is becoming dangerously thin. The removal of key principles – like those found in the former paragraph 96 – has left a vacuum where a ‘health duty’ should be.

When planning becomes purely about the delivery of housing and infrastructure, it stops being about people. We believe that a local plan should not be considered ‘sound’ if it cannot prove it will actively reduce health inequalities.

This isn’t just a matter of aesthetics or convenience; it is a matter of life expectancy. 

Planning isn’t just about the bricks that make a house; it’s about the air we breathe, the noise we hear, and the incidental social interactions that happen when a street is designed for walking rather than just car storage.

The expert in the room: Lived experience

If we are to weave health back into the heart of our communities, we have to change how we value evidence. Our current system is addicted to top-down, quantitative data – economic projections and viability assessments that look great on a spreadsheet but can often fail on the street.

The missing piece of this puzzle is lived experience. 

A resident knows that a local community hall isn’t just a “F2 use class” building; they know it’s the only warm space for a lonely neighbour or the only safe spot for a teenager to go after school. They know which parks feel safe at night and which roads are too dangerous for a child to cycle on.

We are calling for lived experience to be treated with the same weight as traditional economic data. Until we stop treating residents as obstacles to delivery and start treating them as the primary experts on their own lives, we will continue to build places that lack soul and resilience.

Protecting what matters: The ‘Last of its Kind’ trap

This lack of lived insight is most apparent in the proposed protections for “last of their type” community facilities. While we support the principle of protection, the current wording reveals a worrying lack of nuance. If a neighbourhood has two community centres but both are already at 100% capacity, losing one is just as devastating to that community as losing a ‘last’ facility.

By setting the bar at ‘the last of its type,’ the policy ignores the reality of overstretched services. We need a system that protects the capacity of a community to thrive, not just the final survivor of a dying infrastructure. Decisions to close or change these spaces must be informed by deep engagement, not just a count of how many buildings are left on a map.

The ‘and/or’ loophole: A threat to our green lungs?

The same risk of planning by spreadsheet appears in the small but alarming ‘and/or’ in Policy HC7 regarding recreational land. The policy suggests that if a developer builds over a community field, they can replace it with something of equivalent quantity and/or quality.

On paper, this sounds reasonable. In reality, could it be a devastating loophole? 

Could it allow a developer to trade a large, open field that is essential for flood mitigation, biodiversity, and communal sport for a tiny, ‘high-quality’ pocket park? A designer garden is no substitute for a community’s green lungs. 

To protect our quality of life, replacement provision must be of at least equivalent quantity and quality. Anything less is not a trade; it’s a removal of community space.

Furthermore, and crucially, a replacement is only a replacement if it actually serves the same community. If a facility is technically higher quality but sits a mile further away or on the other side of a major road, it is effectively non-existent for the people who relied on it. And thus it is not a replacement.

A blueprint for a life well-lived

The government’s mission-led agenda for growth is ambitious, but growth without quality of life is a hollow victory. 

Planning has the power to fix our health crisis and tackle the epidemic of loneliness. But to do that, it must be a blueprint for a life well-lived, not just a spreadsheet of houses built or community buildings remaining. 

We need a framework that values people as much as it values units.


The government’s consultation is running until 10 March 2026 and you can respond here.