Updates to national planning policy are rapidly joining mulled wine and carol singing as a Christmas tradition. This year’s update of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – the first from the new Labour government – is explicitly aimed at getting more new homes built to meet the manifesto commitment to deliver 1.5m new homes over the life of the parliament.

Housing targets are taking most of the headlines, and understandably so. A new standard method uses the existing number of homes as a starting point, replacing contentious projections of the future number of households. Combined with a further increase to reflect local ratios of house prices to incomes, this new formula requires the delivery of more than 370,000 new homes in England – a 20% increase on the old target.