Comment

A changed approach to landscape policy in the draft NPPF

The draft revised NPPF, published for consultation in December 2025, proposes subtle but significant changes to landscape policy and requires a careful balancing act of optimising development densities at the same time as respecting and responding to local character.

Below, Associate Directors in Landscape and Townscape, Cassandra Wheadon and Mandy Renshaw explore the changes, considerations and implications in more detail. 

On one hand, the tone of the draft NPPF is framed to support delivery of the Government’s pro-development mission, with a strong emphasis on effective use of land, increased densities and delivery of development in sustainable locations. On the other, there is renewed emphasis on landscape quality, landscape character and the importance of landscape-led design. Landscape proposals for new developments are now of central importance to the success of a scheme; they need to deliver landscape enhancements and contribute to place-making as well as mitigate any potential adverse landscape and visual effects of a development. 

Policies DP3, L2 and L3^[1] illustrate this pressure particularly clearly:

1) Development is expected to respond positively to landscape character and context whilst this should not preclude increased scale or density, where justified.

2) Existing character must be taken into account, whilst inefficient use of land is clearly discouraged, and, in some cases, considered as grounds for refusal.

Rather than being mutually exclusive, these aspirations appear to be deliberately held in balance.

Landscape character is no longer positioned as a fixed constraint that limits the potential for development, but as a starting point that should be used to shape how development is distributed, designed and, where necessary, intensified. In other words, landscape is not an absolute constraint, it is a design tool.

A shift in focus away from landscape value to landscape character and qualities

It is also notable that the draft NPPF removes any reference to “valued landscapes” outside of designated areas. In landscape terms, this signals a shift away from focussing on landscape value, towards a greater reliance on landscape character and landscape qualities. While this may reduce the weight previously afforded to locally valued but undesignated landscapes, it also places greater importance on robust character assessment, clear articulation of landscape qualities, and an understanding of which elements genuinely underpin local identity and sense of place.

This change reinforces the need for landscape evidence to move beyond assertions about value and impacts, and instead places great weight on the need for landscape-led development to demonstrate a positive response which conserves and strengthens landscape features and character through design.

The need for robust design codes, landscape strategies and LVIAs to accompany planning applications will be even more important. 

This new approach to landscape planning has significant implications, particularly for greenfield and edge-of-settlement sites. Many such locations are characterised by large plots and a loose urban grain. Simply extending that pattern of development to meet the large number of new homes required by Government policy, without careful design, risks inefficient use of land and the creation of an abrupt or uncomfortable transition where settlement meets countryside. The draft NPPF, with its focus on efficiency and delivery, arguably reinforces this pressure.

Landscape-led thinking is required to resolve this potential contradiction, by working with the defining characteristics of a site (trees, woodland, topography, landscape structure), development can be focused into more compact areas, allowing densities to increase, where capacity exists, while retaining and reinforcing landscape features and elements that contribute strongly to local character and distinctiveness. The result can be a smaller developable footprint, higher density in appropriate locations, and a stronger, more legible landscape framework overall.

In this context, “doing more with less” is not in conflict with landscape character; it can be the means of protecting it. Particularly in sustainable locations, such as sites close to public transport (particularly train stations), landscape-led density can provide a credible route to reconciling policy objectives that might otherwise appear contradictory.

The draft NPPF signals a shift. Landscape arguments based solely on resistance to change are likely to carry less weight. Masterplanning that is strategic, spatial and design-led; which demonstrates how landscape can enable efficient, high-quality development will become more influential than ever.

For more information on what the proposed NPPF changes could mean for landscape policy please contact Cassandra Wheadon and Mandy Renshaw. 

5 March 2026

[1] National Planning Policy Framework: proposed reforms and other changes to the planning system