National planning policy has been re-written to favour modest, well-designed growth in the villages that long sat below the growth threshold. The new Framework is in force. We help landowners across the East Midlands work out what it means for their land, and move while the advantage lasts.
A short film on the reformed Framework — what it changes for village land, and why timing decides who benefits.
The Framework published on 17 August 2026 replaces the old “tilted balance” with a suite of national decision-making policies. Three of them change the starting point for land in and around smaller settlements.
Proposals inside a settlement should be approved unless their benefits would be substantially outweighed by adverse effects — a markedly more supportive test than the restraint policies in many older local plans.
Outside the boundary, limited infilling within a group of houses is permitted. And where a council cannot demonstrate a five-year housing supply, or has delivered below 75% on the Housing Delivery Test, a scheme that is physically well related to the settlement and of a scale the infrastructure can take has a route through.
Substantial weight is given to creating additional homes within settlements — sensitive infill, redevelopment within existing plots, and additional units within generous residential curtilages.
Annex A directs that development plan policies materially inconsistent with the new national policies are given very limited weight — and it has applied since the day of publication. The settlement-hierarchy policies that kept lower-tier villages off the map are precisely the policies exposed. The argument has to be made policy by policy: age alone is expressly not enough, so it is a question of showing which local policy conflicts with which national one.
The unmet-need route is strongest where a council is under-supplied or under-delivering — which is where our forensic five-year-supply analysis earns its keep. One threshold question comes first: the Framework’s definition of a settlement now excludes hamlets and scattered groups of houses outside built-up areas, unless the local plan defines them otherwise. Whether your land sits inside or outside a settlement decides which test applies, and it is not always the answer the postal address suggests.
Clarity Planning full-text analysis of the National Planning Policy Framework, 17 August 2026.
We take a site from a first conversation through to a consented, deliverable scheme — and structure the deal so the value reaches the landowner.
An honest read on whether your land is one the reform favours: which policy route it engages, the realistic scale, the constraints that matter, and a recommended next step — with costs.
Applications assembled and presented to maximise the chance of consent, and appeals argued in the Inspectorate’s own language — full, outline and permission-in-principle.
Contingent promotion, option and conditional-contract structures that lift land value without asking you to fund speculative planning work up front.
Promoting land through the plan-making stages — and monitoring the policy that decides which sites are allocated and which are left out.
The forensic, data-led core of our practice: rebuilding an authority’s housing land supply and delivery position to establish exactly where the unmet-need route bites.
Our differentiatorWe carry a scheme beyond consent — design, layout and the practical steps to a site that is built, not just permitted.
Engage us as planning consultants on a straightforward fee basis — or share the risk and reward through promotion, acquisition, or a hybrid of the two.
Standard, fee-based planning consultancy: strategy and appraisal, and the preparation and conduct of applications and appeals — from statement of case through to inquiry.
On the litigation-funding model: we fund and run the application or appeal at our own risk and cost, and are paid only on a defined success — a grant of permission or an allowed appeal. As with third-party litigation finance, we take on only the cases our forensic assessment rates as meritorious, and you carry no downside if it does not succeed.
Where you would rather sell, we can acquire the land directly — including on conditional or option terms tied to securing consent.
A structured arrangement combining an option to acquire with a promotion obligation, aligning every party’s interest in the best outcome.
We also hold a suite of proven option, promotion and conditional-contract instruments, repeatedly used on recent transactions — which can reduce the legal cost and time of documenting a deal. Landowners should always take independent legal advice.
A dispersed structure of smaller settlements, development plans that largely pre-date the reform, and authorities under pressure on housing supply — the conditions in which the new Framework has most to offer.
“The unmet-need route is strongest where an authority is under-supplied or under-delivering.”
Where a council cannot demonstrate a five-year land supply, or has delivered below 75% on the Housing Delivery Test, Policy S5 opens a route for well-related development beyond the settlement boundary. Where it can demonstrate both, the within-settlement routes of S4 and L2 remain — and a narrow five-year protection applies to one strand of the unmet-need argument, not to all of it. Knowing which applies, in which district, at which date, is where our forensic analysis earns its keep.
Real settlements across our four counties — the kind of places where a single well-judged plot, sensitively handled, can add a home without harming the character that makes them worth living in.
Photographs of real Leicestershire villages, licensed under Creative Commons (BY-SA) via Geograph / Wikimedia Commons. Full credits above.
Clarity Planning was built on a conviction that the best planning cases are won on evidence, not assertion. We bring an analytical and statistical background, data and evidence led, to the analysis that decides appeals — housing land supply, delivery trajectories, and the weight properly attached to policy — and pair it with the design and delivery capability to turn a consent into a scheme.
Our work reads like counsel’s: precise citations, verbatim policy, and a clear line from the facts to the outcome. For a landowner, that means advice you can rely on and a case an Inspector can follow.
Own a garden, paddock, plot or underused site in or around your village? An early conversation costs nothing and tells you, quickly, whether it’s worth pursuing.
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