Good design, clearer decisions: what the draft NPPF means in practice An Article By: Alan Wright, Senior Architectural Technologist, Boyer Design The government’s December 2025 revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) makes some significant changes regarding design. Chapter 14, “Achieving well-designed places”, redrafts the current design chapter and is intended to work alongside a new consolidated Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance, published for consultation in January 2026. For all many years that planning policy has addressed design, the system has often lacked a clear and consistent way to judge it. Applicants have therefore been left trying to satisfy broad design ambitions without always knowing how those ambitions will be assessed in practice. The proposed changes are an attempt to make that process more structured, more transparent and, in theory, easier to defend at application and appeal stage. At the heart of the draft framework is policy DP3, which rewrites the design tests around a set of principles for well-designed places. These begin with context and then run through liveability, climate, nature, movement, built form, public space and identity, with the accompanying guidance describing seven features of a well-designed place, all informed by context. The draft NPPF also gives these … Continue reading What The New NPPF Really Means