Labour MP Chris Hinchliff has launched a strong criticism of England’s National Planning Policy Framework, arguing that the system is failing communities, failing to deliver enough homes and failing to protect either housing standards or the environment.
The North East Hertfordshire MP said:
The National Planning Policy Framework is a spectacular failure.
He argued that the current approach combines excessive process with poor outcomes:
All at once, it ignores communities, fails to build homes we need, and is a labyrinth of empty process that doesn’t protect the environment or uphold decent housing standards.
Hinchliff concluded:
Scrap the lot and start again.
Hinchliff: ‘Scrap the lot and start again’
Hinchliff’s intervention goes beyond familiar complaints about planning delays. He is calling for the framework itself to be torn up and replaced with a new system that he says would better balance housebuilding, community consent and environmental protection.
The MP represents a constituency that has seen intense local debate over housing targets, infrastructure and the character of towns and villages — making planning reform a live political issue for residents as well as for national government.
Pressure on Labour’s housebuilding agenda
The criticism lands at a time when the Government has made housebuilding and planning reform central to its economic programme.
Rather than opposing new housing, Hinchliff is arguing for a different system — one that delivers homes while giving communities a stronger role and providing clearer guarantees on quality and environmental protection.
His challenge to ministers is that simply streamlining the existing framework is not enough: the planning system needs to be redesigned around better homes, stronger communities and clearer environmental standards.
