So, 19 planning authorities have delayed their local plans in the light of the Government's shifting stance on planning policy.  It feels like more: there cannot be many professionals working in planning who have not recently seen a local plan pulled or a planning committee make a maverick decision on a residential planning application, all no doubt encouraged by the pre-Christmas proposed watering down of national planning policy when it comes to residential development. 

Yet the same Government that is encouraging Councils to become more anti-development is still claiming that its objective is to significantly boost the supply of homes.  Exactly how, we are entitled to ask?   If authorities are on the one hand being encouraged to delay, to "unallocate" sites and to refuse consents, where is the supply boost coming from? This is either incompetence or disingenuity on the part of the Secretary of State.   

It seems to me that if these inconsistencies and contradictions are followed through into the final form of the NPPF following the current round of consultation (and rumours abound of rubberstamping the changes before the local election purdah period kicks in) then the justification for a legal challenge to the new policy is there, on grounds of irrationality and also, perhaps, for failing to consult.