If you have an appeal in progress, it is now being determined under policy that did not exist when you submitted it. The revised National Planning Policy Framework was published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 17 August 2026, and the decision-making half of it took effect on publication.
Paragraph 11(d) is gone. Under the December 2024 framework it granted permission where policies were out of date, unless a protected reason applied or adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. Policy age was the trigger. It is not any more.
What replaced it
The new route runs on location rather than on whether a plan has aged.
- S3 routes the proposal. Inside a settlement it goes to S4. Outside one it goes to S5.
- S4 approves development in settlements unless the benefits would be substantially outweighed by adverse effects.
- S5 lists what is acceptable outside settlements, including agriculture, rural business, previously developed land, exception sites, development near a well-connected station, allocated land, and evidenced unmet need.
- S6 gives particular protection to qualifying recent neighbourhood plans.
Where a site falls partly inside and partly outside a settlement, the relevant parts are assessed against S4 or S5 as applicable. That is a small sentence with large consequences for edge-of-settlement schemes, which are now two arguments rather than one.
The wording that will be litigated
S4 asks whether benefits would be substantially outweighed by adverse effects. The 2024 test asked whether adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. Those are not the same sentence, and the consultation draft used a different formulation again. Expect the first year of appeal decisions to be largely about what the new one means.
Why the date matters as much as the drafting
National decision-making policy applied from publication. Plan-making is treated separately, and Annex 1 sets out when the December 2024 framework continues to apply to plan examinations, including neighbourhood plans. So the plan-making half has a runway and the decision-making half did not.
If a live statement of case argues paragraph 11(d), it argues a paragraph that no longer exists. Rewrite it rather than annotate it, and rewrite it around where the site sits rather than around how old the plan is.
Who this moves the advantage towards
An authority with a weak supply position used to lose most contested housing appeals close to automatically. That is no longer the mechanism. A supply failure now feeds in as evidenced unmet need under S5(1)(j) rather than switching on a tilted balance across the board.
The clearest winners are schemes inside settlement boundaries, which get a default yes they did not previously have. The clearest losers are schemes that relied on an out-of-date plan to carry an otherwise weak location.
Sources
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, National Planning Policy Framework, published 17 August 2026.
- Burges Salmon, The August 2026 NPPF: key departures from the consultation draft, on the S3/S4/S5 structure and split sites.
- Planning Geek, NPPF 2024 vs 2026, on the replacement of paragraph 11(d).