Whilst a lot of the PPG appears pretty well crafted it does seem to
overlook the practical difficulty of the legal requirement to give
primacy to the development plan in decision making.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/first-homes
As drafted the transitional arrangements for decision taking in para
20 only apply to soon-to-be-adopted plans NOT already-adopted-plans,
about which the PPG appears silent. At face value para 20 can only be
read as stating by omission that compliance with an
already-adopted-plan is not a valid reason to disapply the policy, and
therefore it should apply with immediate effect, but the decision
maker still has a duty to consider what weight to give to this. While
it is based on a WMS and therefore has as much weight as any national
policy statement can have, it can still only be considered a material
consideration in the overall balance...
I'm curious as to how LPAs are likely to react to the First Homes WMS
and PPG in decision making. (Especially those of you with an
up-to-date adopted plan.)
